To Taste The Light
by runforcovers
Summary: When Dr. Martinez moves her family to New York, no one says it's going to be easy, but they'll get through it together (ish). Little do they know, Gotham is covered in gunpowder and gasoline, and all it takes is one spark between two people to ignite a city. After all, it's a long way down from here, but sometimes you have to fall before you can fly. AU
1. Nulla: Limbo

**AN: **Hey, it's me. So, my summer break has officially begun and it seems that I have a pattern going on where whenever I do get the chance to write, I don't, then I complain about how I didn't when I don't have the time anymore. I'm trying to break that streak by writing a new story – this one, incidentally (ha ha).

I do have a prologue for another story up on this account – a Maximum Ride OC one – and I'll get back to that at some point, but right now I've really been getting back into JP's characters. This one is short, just over 850 words, but hey, it's only a prologue. The chapters will be longer.

Without further ado, I present to you: _TO TASTE THE LIGHT~_

_._

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo _~

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_**.**_

_**p**-r-o-l-o-g-u-e__  
_

_**n **u l l a__ :_

_**l **__i m b o_

_._

_**c**__hapter __**s**__ong:_

_**b**__ring __**m**__e __**t**__he __**h**__orizon – __**c**__an __**y**__ou __**f**__eel __**m**__y __**h**__eart_

_**c**__an you hear the silence?_

_**c**__an you see the dark?_

_**c**__an you fix the broken?_

_**c**__an you feel... can you feel my heart?_

_._

_**c**__an you help the hopeless?_

_**w**__ell, __**i**__'m begging on my knees,_

_**c**__an you save my bastard soul?_

_**w**__ill you wait for me?_

_._

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo ~  
_

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It was cold. Oh, so cold.

"Ah, Doctor Martinez? Yes – my name is Doctor Gunther-Hagen; I work for Mister Pruitt,"

Gunther-Hagen's voice was remarkably steady – and you wouldn't even have to be _au fait_ with his current situation to know why his calm tone was impressive, all you'd have to do was look at his face. His forehead was lined with tension and stress, his mouth taut with unspoken fear, his irises clouding and shaking and repeatedly slipping out of focus.

And his skin was cold. Oh, so cold.

The phone hushed and Gunther-Hagen started talking almost the very moment Martinez was finished.

"I've called as a result of a recent staffing shortage on a… new project at the NYCI facility and, upon inspection of your recent progress, as well records of your past work; my superiors have decided to offer you a promotion. If you should accept, they will be expecting your presence on-site beginning on the twenty-first of August,"

There was a brief silence followed by a muffled reply from the other end of the line, to which he began nodding slowly and thoughtfully.

"Yes, I understand completely," he murmured, pausing his nodding for a split second before establishing a firmer, more enthusiastic nod. "Well, full details would be emailed to you and further discussions would be held upon your arrival – should you undertake the promotion, of course,"

Another burst of faint speaking was spat from the phone – a wall telephone, not a cell, but even so, it was probably one of the most contemporary, sophisticated wall phones to exist. Gunther-Hagen coughed softly, seemingly a fair fraction less taxed and anxious than he had been mere minutes ago, though the boxy, glaringly white room with its clinical content and stifling disinfectant stench was just as aggressively algid as it had always been.

"Well that's grea–" Gunther-Hagen halted abruptly mid-sentence, giving himself a mental slap. How could his polished professional façade have slipped so easily? Any and every word he spoke during this call could be held against him. He thrust the phone away from his mouth as he gave a small cough, reigning in his emotions in exchange for his default cool tone and stony expression. He returned the apparatus to its perch on his cheek. "That is decidedly agreeable, thank you, Doctor. I will be informing the Board and Council of our mutual affirmation immediately, to allow them time to introduce your name into the deliberation over the composition of the aforementioned project's specialised unit,"

God, that was a lot of long words. Gunther-Hagen wondered often what the point of all this jarring professionalism and overly ceremonial etiquette really was, or if there was even a purpose at all other than to make him sound sickeningly erudite. He almost rolled his eyes, but he was still half-listening to Dr Martinez and was much too immersed in the robotic autopilot mode he always used while working to produce anything more than a twitch in his left eye.

(And it was still too Goddamn cold.)

"Well, this information will of course be attached to all communicative documents of which you will be a recipient," he continued reassuringly, "and you will certainly be thoroughly debriefed, along with the entirety of your new colleague unit, upon arrival,"

After what, in reality, was roughly five more minutes, though it felt like a lifetime, Gunther-Hagen replaced the phone to its nest on the wall. He held in a sigh. That particular call was over and done with, but his work was most definitely not.

He only just managed to swallow the sigh again as it clawed back up his throat at the thought. Seven down, seven to go.

Dr Hans pressed his fingertips to the cover of the phonebook lying on the thin, wheeled metal table resting below the wall phone and slid it off the surface, catching it swiftly with his other hand. Carefully opening it, he flicked nimbly through the pages until he found the 'D' section. This was all for show, of course. He had memorised all fourteen numbers long ago. He had been using this excuse since he made the first call anyway, taking the opportunity to quell his nerves while still looking as if he were being productive.

He found the end of the 'D's pretty quickly. As his eyes flitted between numbers on the page and the numbers on the manual display, he felt himself shiver involuntarily. His eyes hovered a little too long over the book before slowly sliding sideways to find the small black device in the corner, fixed to the ceiling.

Its flashing red dot blinked at him intently, the darkened lens below trained on his every move.

In that moment, he remembered. He remembered why his voice had been so 'remarkably steady'. He remembered the point of all that 'jarring professionalism and overly ceremonial etiquette'. He remembered why his heart was frozen – not solid, but trapped, encased in ice for ever.

And he knew that it wasn't the broken thermostat's fault he had goose bumps.

"Ah, Doctor Dwyer? Yes – my name is Doctor Gunther-Hagen; I work for Mister Pruitt,"

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~ NULLA ~ _limbo _~

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**.**

**AN: **So there you have it. Thanks a bunch for just reading this; it really means a lot to me that someone would even find my stuff readable. This is going to be a full story and I honestly have no clue how many chapters there'll be. We'll see, anyway. It isn't prewritten, so I don't know how long it'll be between chapters either, but as I said earlier, I'm on break, so hopefully I'll have a lot of time to write. It would make me indescribably happy if you could drop a review and any critique you could give could make the story immeasurably better, but thank you so much regardless.

Catch ya later :)

\- Leo


	2. I: Gravity

**AN: **Firstly, I'd like to confess that I've never been to Buckeye – or anywhere in Arizona, actually. I didn't neglect to do my research, but I apologise for any mistakes or misconceptions. Secondly, thanks a million for your reviews (all two of you, haha); they really gave me some things to think about. Lastly, the next chapter will probably take twice as long as this one (I think this has been 6 days?) because I'm going away until Monday, sorry.

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**o**__-n-e_

_**I **__:_

_**g** ra vi t__y_

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_**c**__hapter __**s**__ong:_

_**f**__lorence__** \+ t**__he__** m**__achine__** – w**__hat__** t**__he__** w**__ater__** g**__ave__** m**__e_

_**a**__nd oh, poor __**a**__tlas_

_**t**__he world's a beast of a burden_

_**y**__ou've been holding up a long time_

_**a**__nd all this longing_

_**a**__nd the ships are left to rust_

_**t**__hat's what the water gave us_

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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_MAX_

Afternoons on that side of Buckeye, AZ were generally pretty tranquil. It wasn't hard, with the sun breathing down your neck and only the soft chorus of cricket croaks to keep you company, to forget that the place's population was probably somewhere over 56,000. It was especially effortless for that little tidbit to slip your mind when you were jogging home with titanic gusts of wind and rain drumming down your neck and only the sickly squelch of your sodden socks to keep you company. Why? Because every single person with even a shred of common sense had brought the freaking washing in already and wouldn't be suffering from hypothermia.

I was not one of those people.

I was actually one of the people who didn't even notice the temperature suddenly plummeting, or those great hulking storm clouds rolling in because they were too busy annihilating their friends at B-ball – thereafter I became one of the people trying to see past their stringy, water-logged hair and the constant stream of falling water to check for cars, hoping to all hope they would get home before they could get hit by lightning. Or, rather, I was the only person doing that. Go figure.

My phone had been buzzing in my pocket, shielded from the elements by my faux leather messenger bag, for the past five minutes, give or take. That was probably either my mom, worried, my best friend Sam, also worried, or my half-sister Ella, scavenging a ride home. Whichever way, if any of them expected me to risk assisting Mother Nature in the brutal murder of my phone, they could think again.

As I rounded corner after corner, I wondered how far it really was from my house to the park. In the sun, this trip would usually drain ten minutes, but it felt like the streets had stretched and every intersection was a million miles away. I recognized the houses I was passing, but I couldn't piece together where I was exactly. Nothing was making sense.

I stopped under some overhanging branches of a tree growing in someone's front yard, scrabbling for even just a minute of respite from the howling wind and growling thunder. On the road, the raindrops battled like sword-wielding soldiers, leaping and crashing into each other. The gutters were already overflowing and the drain plates let out tinny whines as they too faced the water's assault.

I checked my watch (waterproof, thank the Gods). 5:51pm.

Stepping back out from my makeshift shelter, I ran on into the storm.

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~ I ~ _gravity ~_

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"Mom?" I hollered, finally through the door after my 5000-year-long sprint through the fall lightning storm. "Mom, I'm alive!"

I tossed my keys on the kitchen counter and dumped my bag on one of the chairs around the island; I was about to thump up the stairs when I heard a weak "That's nice, honey!" from the garden. What was my mom doing out in the back, in this weather? I loped through the utility room and hovered in the open glass door.

"Uh, mom?"

She was at the washing line, throwing damp garments into a plastic basket at full tilt. She shrugged a shoulder in greeting, but didn't take her attention off the task. I shook my head, lips turning up at the corners as I trotted out to help. As I ripped my sister's tees off the wire, I glanced up at my mom. Her hair and clothes were only speckled with rain, so I guessed she hadn't been outside for long, but that wasn't what got me.

What with her being so warm and breezy most of the time, I wouldn't have been surprised to see such a thoughtful expression on her face; she couldn't _always _be in Mama Mode. I just wasn't expecting her to look so… _troubled. _Everyone worries about things once in a while, some more than others. My mom, though, looked more than just worried. Her dark eyebrows were drawn up, as if afraid or confused, her lips pursed tightly and her chocolate brown doe-eyes forlorn and sorrowful. That was the kind of look you'd expect from Valencia Martinez when pigs flew.

Then she noticed me watching and it was gone, erased entirely as if it had never been there. Mama Mode was back in business. I heard her say "Thanks for helping, Max," from somewhere distant, but she was only feet away, still moving hurriedly around the line, and I realized that I'd stopped pulling clothes off.

A little spooked, I got back to work.

_Jeez, I guess those pigs managed to figure out how air travel works after all._

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~ I ~ _gravity ~_

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I was still sopping wet when I pulled up at Ella's friend's house, but I'd laid out our dog's waterproof blankets over the front seats before I left. I parked on the curb and hopped out to help Ella, who was already standing at the door saying goodbye, with her overnight bags.

I swear this girl had another sleep-over with another friend every night. I did alright with remembering their names at first, but their faces just ended up blurring together and I couldn't think whether there were two friends called Robin and Kylie or there was one friend called Rylie (which might have been odd because I had a memory like an elephant, but I'm not kidding when I say there were probably a hundred of them. I honestly didn't know how she coped).

We eventually managed to get her newly dripping bags into the trunk (how much stuff could she have needed to take?) and I eventually managed to wrestle my newly dripping sister into the front seat because she wouldn't stop trying to yell to her friend over the rain. We drove in comfortable silence at first, before I remembered something.

"By the way," I began, still unsure myself, "Mom said she has something important to tell us,"

Ella didn't seem fazed. "Like what?"

"I don't know. She didn't say anything but that," I confessed, training my eyes on the road. We were quiet again for another couple of minutes, but I needed to say something. "I was helping her take the washing in earlier, 'cause it was raining–"

"It still is raining, Max. It is raining like the Devil's anu–"

"– and she looked like something was really bothering her. Whatever this 'news' is about, I have a feeling it's not going to be a good thing,"

Ella looked at me and I glanced back at her, but quickly turned back to the road. She carried on studying me carefully for a few minutes – if I couldn't see it, I could definitely feel it – before frowning into her lap for a moment and gazing out of her window, resting her elbow at the base of the glass with her chin in her palm.

The silence we fell into wasn't really comfortable or uncomfortable. It was more of an 'I'm thinking, don't bother me' silence. The dead air ruled for the rest of the ride.

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* * *

~ I ~ _gravity ~_

* * *

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I sat on the hard wooden sill below my bedroom window, listening to the storm. It was some time past seven and I'd just taken a shower; Ella had somehow managed to get to the bathroom before me, but she wasn't prepared for my mighty arm-wrestling skills, so I'd claimed the next 15 minutes of shower time as my own. ("Face it, Ella – you'll never defeat the great Max Martinez! Bow to your queen!" I'd told her while graciously accepting my prize. I may also have cackled.)

I'd cracked the window open and sat on the recessed ledge with my back up against the hinged side. I actually felt pretty peaceful there, listening to the spatter of raindrops on the glass pane and watching the clouds light up in flashes, with the cool air blowing in over my bare legs. That's probably why I had a full-body spasm and ended up bashing my head against the short stretch of wall behind me when my dog decided to make a surprise guest appearance.

"Oh my God, Magnolia," I growled, rubbing at my scalp. I rolled my eyes, looking down to see her standing to attention in the middle of the burgundy carpet. "Alright, come here, you little sausage,"

She wasn't watching me, though. Mags was gazing mournfully up at the open window and slowly lying herself on the floor (which didn't take long, considering how basset hounds are all low-to-the-ground, fat kind of dogs). I slid off the sill and my brows drew together as I made my way over to comfort her, assuming that she'd been frightened by the choppy downpour. I crouched and laid a hand on her back; she quickly responded by rolling over, the universal belly rub signal, but let out a long whimper and flopped on her side when I began to pet her stomach.

That was weird.

Just as I was about to go and find my mom – she was a vet, she would have known what was up (and something was definitely up;no dog can resist my belly rubs) – the woman in question called up the stairs.

"Girls, would you mind coming to the kitchen for a second?"

Ah, typical Mama Martinez technique #374: get your kids to do what you want by phrasing an instruction like a request, as if they have a choice. I noted that she'd realized we knew how she did that, so she'd upped the dosage and thrown in trademark technique #235 as well: get your kids to go where you want by telling them to meet you in the kitchen, so they'll bother to do it because think they're getting cookies.

Actually, there was a kind of chocolate-y, vanilla-ish scent wafting through the open…

_Mine._

Like lightning, I scooped up Mags and shot down the stairs ("Max honey, stop running on the stairs, you'll rack up a ton in hospital bills!") to the source of the holy scent: _the promised food. _Mom was just taking a second tray out of the oven and laying it down next to the first; both of them were blanketed in the chow of the Gods. I set Magnolia down at the door and stuffed a couple in my hamster-pouch mouth while mom was busy closing the oven door.

"Do I detect – whoa!" cried Ella, suited up in a fuzzy bathrobe and loose towel turban, almost tripping over Mags. The dog had plopped herself on the floor in the doorway. "You put her there on purpose, didn't you?" she accused, casting me a scornful look through strands of her newly wet hair as she stepped over the hound.

"Wheh, whoh on Erf wooh meh you fink dah?" I answer innocently through a mouthful of hot, mushy Heaven.

Mom chuckled as she slid her oven gloves off and set them down neatly next to the cookie trays, quickly deflecting Ella's snaking hand with her own, before going to take a seat on the opposite side of the wooden island. "No cookies yet, they're still hot," she said, lifting a finger to hush Ella's cry of indignation before it began, "Max only got one because she stole it while I wasn't looking," she finished sternly, turning her scowl on me.

"Yup," I confirmed, popping the 'p' and pulling up a pew, "and I got the other one because you _still_ weren't looking,"

She rolled her eyes; her hands now intertwined and stretched out in front of her in the 'we need to talk' signal used by moms everywhere. A still-grumbling Ella parked herself reluctantly next to me.

"What up, Mama V?" I prompted, given that I didn't think she was going to start any serious conversation herself.

"Well, I, um," she began tentatively, looking down at her linked fingers, resting on the island counter-top. "I got a call today, from work. I found it a little odd – they called me around a quarter to six, so I knew they didn't need me in, or else they would've called earlier. They actually, ah… they offered me a promotion,"

Ella lit up. "That's great, mom,"

Mom nodded cheerfully, but still looked tense. "Yes, it is,"

And then it clicked.

"Mom," I said slowly, dangerously.

"What's up, Max?" she tried casually. _Tried._

"Mom," I repeated, but with less inquisitiveness and more solidity this time. "Mom, where exactly will you be working now?"

She made a weak attempt to look at me, but her eyes only made it to the fruit bowl in the center of the island. She cleared her throat guiltily.

"_Mom, where have they put you?"_

Ella hovered on her seat next to me, but the expression I saw in the corner of my eye revealed that she still hadn't caught on. Her milky brown eyes, usually soft and welcoming, but now wild and panicked, flickered frantically between me and our mother.

"Honey," she said lightly, which only set me on edge even more, "Honey, I'll be working at the NYCI,"

That was all I needed to hear. I slumped back on the stool, having stood up at some point, my eyes wandering like they were lost somehow. My throat was dry and closing up, but that wasn't going to stop me making my case.

"Mom," Ella started, but I guess she wasn't in the mood to be babied either, because she stopped and turned to me instead, "Max, what does that mean? What's the NYCI, is that a bad thing?"

"Oh God, not this," I whispered sharply, avoiding the question. "I mean, on top of all the other obvious reasons why I am so not okay with this, it's… that's so _cliché_,"

"What?" Dr. M (motherhood card temporarily revoked) looked taken aback.

"I'm seventeen," I spat, my face scrunching up defiantly, "I'm about to go into my last year of high school and you're going to make me do it somewhere completely new, with completely new people. This is like a freaking teen sitcom – a really bad one at that, if they're even looking twice at tropes like this,"

"Completely new place, completely new people," Ella echoed quietly. Suddenly, her head shot up and she eyed mo–_ Dr. M_ distrustfully. "That doesn't mean what I think it means, does it?"

I sighed angrily, but it came out as more of a childish huff. "Of course it does, Ella," I narrowed my eyes at the woman sitting opposite us, aloof and agitated. "Freaking Hell, I can picture the segregated cliques in the big white cafeteria now. Let me guess: short, sweaty, balding, sweater-vest-clad home room teacher," I began, ticking off on my fingers, "Cool, calm, collected female principal, complete with Tybaltesque, snarky, grudge-holding vice," I barked out a cold laugh.

My sister sighed next to me, dejected. "We might as well be reading fan-fiction," she agreed solemnly.

I shook my head again, assessing Dr. M's facial expression and body language. She looked hopeful, but the way she sat was meek and passive, fully planning on letting us soak this up on our own. I looked at Ella then. She didn't seem to have much fight in her either, but I could tell she wasn't happy about it from the way her features were all screwed up together. There was a curious kind of fire in her eyes as she met my gaze.

"Where?" she demanded.

"My friend, I do believe we're headed for the Big Apple," I said, though I knew the question wasn't really for me.

Dr. M seemed to see it that way too. "NYCI stands for the New York City Institute," she explained. She inhaled deeply before trying out a different approach. "I wanted to tell you two as soon as possible; waiting would have only made it harder on all of us. I mean, it was a surprise for me too – the call came straight out of the blue – and of course, I haven't _officially _agreed yet, there's paperwork I need to fill out for that…"

I wasn't listening anymore. I stared blankly over her shoulder, looking more _at _the window than out of it. Hail was bouncing off the glass in frenzied legions as if it were trying to break in; I could hear the claps and rumbles of thunder not far off too. The raucous weather was still going strong, even after over an hour – it must have been a multi-cellular cluster. I'd have to mention that observation if things got any worse; those things could be lethal.

My head turned itself to look at Mags. She was still sitting in the threshold, but she'd laid flat on her stomach with her paws covering her ears, like she wasn't pleased with the news either. The realist in me concluded that the storm was upsetting her, but there was still another part of me, nagging at me that that wasn't the whole story.

Dogs got scared easily, storms happened all the time and sometimes, storms happened at the same time as milestones in people's lives. That didn't mean a thing. That didn't mean anything at all.

My eyes settled back on the window behind Dr. M. The clouds were practically racing past up above. Sporadic stabs of lightning illuminated the streets more brightly than street lamps ever could.

It didn't mean anything. But my jaw tensed anyway and I gulped all the same.

_Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission._

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~ I ~ _gravity _~

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**AN: **Thanks for reading!

(I do recognise that the frequent skips make for jolting, choppy reading and I will try to use less in the future, but as I only kept the important bits, not using them would've meant writing out the boring, pointless in-between parts, too. Sorry about that, anyway)

\- Leo


	3. II: Ties

****Disclaimer: ****I do not own Maximum Ride. I'm not James Patterson or Headline or Doubleday or LBAC or Young Arrow or anyone else who might have rights to Maximum Ride; I'm a penniless teenager who doesn't know how to use an oven. Thanks in advance for not suing me.

**AN: **I'm back. Sorry this took so long; I was away, like I said last time. It's like, Wednesday or something today, right? Thursday? Does it matter? Does time really exist?

Enjoy.

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~ II ~ _ties _~

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**t**__-w-o_

_**II **__:_

_**t **i e s_

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_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**i **__have noticed that even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road"_

_ \- **S**__TEPHEN __**H**__AWKING_

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~ II ~ _ties ~_

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_MAX_

One month.

We had _one month _until we would be settled in our new 'home'.

Now, before you get all 'but Max, surely you didn't give up that easily. You were Max Martinez and nothing stood in the way of Max Martinez', you're completely right. I was Max Martinez and nothing dared get in my way, lest it be crushed under the filthy sole of my mighty Chucks.

My mom, though… my mom wasn't 'nothing'. Honestly, I think I would have done just about anything for my mom. I know, I know: _ugh_/_aww_. I hadn't really had many people who I cared much about in my life – I'd had plenty of opportunity; I knew plenty of people, but I was terribly picky about whom I could trust and/or open up to and I hadn't met an awful lot of people who I deemed worthy of that. I guarantee I could have counted every bearer of the 'Max Martinez Badge of Trust' on one hand.

That's why I'd accepted that we were moving – _across the country, _completely out of the blue – but that didn't mean that I was going to go out quietly. It had been two days since our dear mother dropped that anvil of an announcement on us both and Ella and I had been spearheading a protest – an especially venomous one, after mom had flown over our heads and released the 'Fat Man' counterpart to the 'Little Boy' we faced on Sunday: we had to pack up our shit and say goodbye to a lifetime of comfortable familiarity in a single month.

"It's like putting the milk in before the cereal, Max," Ella pressed, stabbing at some scrambled egg with a fork. "There's a reason the shampoo goes on first,"

Our plan of action included talking like this around mom: totally normally, as if nothing had ever happened. We bickered about trivial things like celebrities' morality (even though it wasn't really any of our business) and the last slice of pizza and whose turn it was to take the trash out just as we always did. We figured that was a more effective method of passive-aggressively chipping away at mom's chipper attitude than having an ongoing tantrum over it. She'd just brush off our moping and moaning, thinking we were being childish – the message would hit harder this way.

"But why does it matter?" I said cattily, rolling my eyes and pushing my cereal into the milk with my spoon.

"Ugh! I've had enough of you and it's only nine on a goddamn Tuesday morning," she scoffed, pushing up from her seat at the kitchen island and grabbing her bowl of eggs. "I'm going to find Magnolia – at least _she_ doesn't sass me when I'm clearly in the right,"

"Are you sure that's not just because she's, oh, I don't know, a dog?" I called after her as she strutted out into the living room, being careful not to let the humor slip into my voice. Mom was still leaning against the sink, sorting through the mail.

The downstairs area of our house was pretty open-plan, so the kitchen was only separated from the living room by a length of maple counters and cupboards. In my peripheral vision, I watched as Ella found Mags already lying on the couch in front of the TV and sunk into the cushions. I felt weird sitting there on my own, with my mom standing around so casually just feet away, so I decided to go and pick a fight with my sister over the remote. Making sure to clatter the spoon against the bowl as I threw it in, I stood sharply, the chair's feet squealing as they scraped against the tile, and strolled confidently away.

I didn't look back, but if I had, I imagine I would have seen a twinge of guilt in her eyes.

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~ II ~ _ties_ ~

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'_So say your goodbyes, we're at an all-out war the world won't survive, but I'll choose how I die tonight – so say you're alive one last time and let the fire rise,'_

The lyrics rang in my ears, but I didn't really hear them.

Usually, when I listened to music like that, it was enough to rile me up on its own and my eyes lit up with the fire of a thousand punk-rockers and I ended up breaking something or other as I bounced off the walls. That day, my inner metal had abandoned me, leaving me perched on the edge of my bed, staring blankly at a random spot on the wall near my bedroom door.

I'd realized that it was coming as soon as mom told us about her promotion, I think. But it hadn't sunk in until that moment.

The problem was that I had friends. I had incredible, close, initials-in-trees, promises-in-blood, friendship-set-in-stone-forever friends; friends who I would eventually be forced to break the news to.

That sucked.

I mean, it didn't suck at all to have friends under regular circumstances. Generally, I wasn't all that skilled or talented at friend-making, nor did I have much experience in that area, so it was nice to know that I'd managed to rope at least a couple of people into putting up with me at an early age. Getting bored and lonely would probably have been a frequent problem for me without them; I was a resourceful person, but I was also quite the extrovert, which running laps around the park for hours every day just wouldn't soothe.

For a while, I carried on sitting there inanimately, letting my butt imprint on the mattress and burning a hole through the wall with my scornful stare. The album I was listening to had just run over halfway through when my phone buzzed demandingly in my hand. I peeled my eyes away from the paint work, frowning down at the offending device as the caller ID popped up. Sam.

I leaned sideways to pop the 'pause' button on the CD player that rested on my nightstand, not bothered enough to stand up. Then, I relented to the irritating default jingle resounding from my cell.

"911, what's your emergency?" I said, raising the pitch of my voice slightly to sound like an Emergency Services operator.

"Ho, ho, ho," my best friend replied in a sarcastic monotone.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir. We don't service Christmas crises outside the wintertime," I apologized jokingly.

"You really do have an answer to everything, don't you, Max?" he sighed, but I could practically feel his warm smile radiating from my android. Or maybe it was overheating.

"I really am sorry; sir, but I don't know any Max. I'm Caroline and if you don't have an emergency to report, I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this call," I retaliated.

"Wait, wait – I have an emergency! I do. I have a really, really big, huge, massive, gargantuan, terrible, horrible, tragic emergency," he sounded panicked at first, like he actually believed I was going to hang up, but his voice slipped into a mock-tortured whisper as he described his 'predicament'. "Miss Emergency Services operator lady, I am pained to report that I have four video game controllers and only two friends to play with,"

I gasped. "Oh, God!" I choked out, "Oh my…" – sniff – "…gosh…" – sniff – "I have had victims of all sorts of heinous crimes contact me through this very line, but…" – sniff – "I am so sorry, I really am. I sincerely apologize for ever doubting the legitimacy of your plight for even a second, sir. I'll be right there,"

There was a strangled breath from the other end. "Thank you. Thank you so much, Caroline. Just… please, come quickly,"

A juvenile grin wriggled its way to the surface as I tapped the 'end call' button with my thumb, but withered and died in an instant the moment I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to let on that I'd probably never see them again, or at least not for a long time.

_No, _insisted a desperately indignant voice in my head, _there are a hundred thousand reasons why you can't tell them yet._

_Name one, _hissed the voice of reason. The first voice shied from the challenge and the only voice left was my own. Sadly, my own seemed to agree with Mr. Realistic, because I sighed resignedly and went to my closet, wondering how I'd phrase it.

I pulled (or rather, violently ripped, on account of my freshly soured mood) out a plain gray hoodie, deciding that my ink blue denim shorts and black-and-white TLOU Fireflies Raglan shirt were presentable enough. As I threw on the jacket, I checked the power on my phone and grabbed my hairbrush. The bar read 98%, I processed as I dragged the bristles through my wayward mane, already on my way down the stairs. I scooped up my battered red Chuck Taylors as I emerged from the narrow stairs and passed the door to the utility room.

"I'll be at Sam's!" I bellowed, hopping into the shoes and snatching my keys from a small set of hooks, fixed just above a larger set which housed a cluster of jackets, scarves and coats, in the hall. I hadn't touched them since Sunday and I had a strong suspicion that mom had been cleaning up after us more thoroughly than usual.

"Don't be too late!" trilled Ella, from God knows where, before mom could reply. She would have just said exactly the same thing anyway, which I had a feeling Ella had reasoned too.

When I stepped out, it was around half past ten. The weather permitted me the choice to walk or drive; there was a light breeze and the air was warm, but breathable. If I'd been going anywhere else, I would have taken the car on the premise that there was a chance it would inconvenience my mom, but I was still feeling flighty about spilling to the guys, so I took the sidewalk to clear my head.

As I jogged past the same tree I'd taken refuge under a couple of days ago, I tried to settle a deal with myself. I would let it happen naturally; I didn't have to stress over planning out the entire painful conversation. To quote Ana Monnar, 'whatever is going to happen will happen, whether we worry or not'.

Unfortunately, the wool cannot be pulled over the eyes of Max Martinez, not even her own, and my confidence at that moment was merely skin-deep. The storm in my stomach persisted like the ghost of Sunday's thunderstorm returning to haunt me; I was being consumed by a relentless whirlpool of guilt and worry as I left that tree behind.

For what was potentially the first time in my life, running left me stranded in a sea of stark sadness, and even though I was getting away, I felt like I would never escape.

.

* * *

~ II ~ _ties ~_

* * *

.

"Just go. _Go_," Mazin howled dramatically, flinging his body backwards into the couch and slapping the back of his hand to his forehead, "I'm not worth it! Go on without me!" His lanky legs were sprawled out across the floor and his left arm fell into Ari's lap as he went limp, making some throaty, theatrical choking sounds. Ari's features twisted, horrified, and he shoveled Mazin's 'corpse' off the couch, controller still in hand.

Sam and I were sitting opposite each other on bean bags, placed diagonally from the sofa, in front of the TV screen. Unfortunately for said teenage boy, the body of his recently 'deceased' Arabic friend was destined to fall on him at some point the moment they decided to sit next to each other. I tuned out their puerile boyish yapping and focused on the game, as always having to be the one to keep our butts off the barbecue.

We'd ducked into a boxy, glaringly white room as soon as Mazin had shakily voiced that he'd been hit. It appeared to be an office of some sort, but it didn't have much in it: a thin, wheeled metal table bearing a sleek black phone book, loomed over by a similarly sleek wall phone; a metallic desk, totally clear save for a bursting pen pot and computer monitor, complete with a keyboard, a mouse in the center of a square mouse pad and a modern-looking computer counterpart. There was also a thermostat opposite the wall phone, but it appeared to be broken because it couldn't seem to decide whether the temperature was 21, 98 or 99 degrees. Huh.

I crouched with my avatar and sent her creeping over to the desk. There were a couple of drawers, which I strongly doubted would surrender anything of use, but looting what you could was always worth a shot. The first was locked, but I took note of the odd shape of the key hole; maybe I'd find the key somewhere in the building and we could come back. The caddy in the center held a bunch of folders and loose scraps. I crammed a couple of the folders whose titles merited a second look into my avatar's backpack and gathered a few of the loose papers, figuring we could use them to curb the flow of blood from Maz's leg.

My avatar's fingertips were brushing the horizontal handle of the third drawer, the furthest to the left, when a curious little noise swelled from Sam's throat. It was a sort of strangled grunt and it carried some serious enmity, a good noise to make if you're in the mood to make everyone around you fall off their freaking seats without even touching them.

"What the balls, man?" choked Mazin (we all seemed to be doing a lot of choking that day), who, at some point, had gotten off Sam and curled back into the cushioned couch – or curled as much as a person could, with such a lean, gangling body.

I glanced over at Ari and he was already looking at me, using the same face we always made at each other when Sam or Maz did something stupid, but with a hint of concern this time. I imagine I probably looked the same way: something had really put Sam off, but all the same, it was only a video game.

Sam was looking pretty flustered by the time I turned back to the screen. Angling my avatar's vision up from the desk, I saw that he'd picked up the phone book, but the moment everyone had calmed down he made the noise again and frantically closed it. Did he not want us to see what was in it?

He sighed, letting out a tired chuckle as he crossed his legs and planted his elbows on his knees. "Sorry," he said, his avatar pocketing the book, "It was covered in blood. I mean, I knew this was a gory game, I just wasn't expecting it,"

_Says the red-faced boy as he stands right next to his heavily, rapidly bleeding comrade – yeah, hmm, uh-huh. Sure you weren't._

It was all pretty sketchy, IMHO. I made a note to never turn my avatar's back on him. It probably wasn't a wise idea to leave him alone with an already wounded Maz, either. I wasn't sure whether he'd really gone rogue, but I wasn't going to take any chances – I'm not one to lose at video games.

"Anyone got any ideas?" I asked, yanking open the last of the drawers before I could get distracted again.

There was an assortment of seemingly random items. Some of them were fairly normal, like a pencil sharpener and some more biros scattered around, but there were a few rather off-the-wall objects in there, like a row of neatly placed Petri dishes at the very front, all containing different kinds of the same weird gooey substance. There was some downright sinister stuff too; a collection of scalpels and needles in a clear plastic case, an envelope addressed to one 'ISEDHGH/#088798', a leather-bound book titled 'The Angel Experiment: Operation &amp; Maneuver Manual'…

After making sure I had enough inventory space, I helped myself to some of it. Hey, maybe it would give us a clue about how to find what we were looking for.

"I was kind of hoping you would," Sam answered, pouting.

"I do," I chirped, "I just wanted to see what was already in the pool,"

Ari hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe we could… go back to the elevators," he pondered aloud, sober brown eyes fixed on his section of the screen.

"The elevators are broken, though," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's why they'd be useful. Going up inside them would make too much noise; they'd be waiting for us at the top for sure. We can bind our hands and climb up," Ari countered.

Maz looked utterly lost, but being Maz, he seemed entirely content with being out of the loop. "I do not have the faintest clue what the actual ram-a-llama-king-kong you lot are on about, but I have every blind faith in you,"

"Do you not remember the elevators?" Ari asked lowly, grinning. He'd ripped the lower half off one of Maz's avatar's pant legs and we were trying to press the paper from the drawer to the wound. I hadn't expected it to work because video games usually had a number of pre-programmed items you could use for healing, but this game had proved itself to have impressively realistic physics.

"I don't remember what we're even supposed to be doing. I don't remember the game's name, either. But then, I don't really remember what soap looks like, mate," said Mazin, his British accent coming through more strongly as his tongue familiarised itself with the words.

"I believe that," I threw in.

Sam rolled his eyes. "We're supposed to be escaping from this lab facility,"

"Without getting caught by the scientists or the wolf-men," Ari added.

"Oh," Maz frowned. "Then why are we going _up? _Are we supposed to jump off the roof or something?"

"Exactly that," Sam confirmed, "Our characters have wings. The first goal is to fly away from the facility,"

The leaves of paper were absolutely soaked in scarlet now, rendered useless. I grabbed Maz's abandoned pant leg and tied it as tightly as my strength stats would allow around his calf. Blood began to seep into it instantly, but slower than before. The pressure was helping. "I think that's all we can do for now," I conceded, "I was going to suggest we take the back stairs, but they probably have that covered. Elevators, ho!"

Just as we were about to take off, my phone decided to speak up. I was really beginning to get tired of that thing.

"The number you are looking for has been disconnected," I said coolly.

"Sweethear– Max, it's almost dinnertime," my mom said, ignoring my antics. Opting to cut the friendly crap, I noted. "You've been at Sam's for hours. I'd like you to come home before it gets dark,"

"Oh, would you? Well, that's awfully sweet," I growled back coldly.

She sighed submissively. "Yes, I would. Listen, I know you girls are mad at me and you have every right to be, but I'm still your mother and it's my job to keep you safe,"

"_Oh,_" I scoffed, "Your job, huh? That it? You look out for us because you feel obligated to?" Mom tried to cut in, but I stopped her. "Save it, Valencia. Consider yourself fired,"

I stabbed spitefully at the 'end call' button, letting out a wheezy, irked huff as I threw my phone across the cream carpet. An uneasy silence gathered over the room. I was sitting feet away from them; they couldn't really have avoided hearing the whole thing.

"So," Sam started tentatively, his voice soft. "You want to tell us what that was about or…"

I really didn't. The pit of misery was back, but I didn't think I'd ever have been able to make myself do it if I didn't do it then.

"I, uh," I began. Suddenly, I knew exactly how my mom had felt. "My mom got a promotion at her work,"

Maz, ever a little slow, looked relieved. "Oh, good for her. She's a vet, right?"

"Yeah, she is," I said, my voice getting progressively smaller. My forearms rested on my knees, my head down and my hood up. I clenched and unclenched my hands nervously. "It's a really good promotion, too. She says she'll get paid a lot more, with a ton of perks, and she'll be working to actually develop cures for stuff,"

"But?" Ari prompted, on the same 'where's the catch' wavelength I'd been when mom told me and Ella.

"But she'll be working in New York," I breathed, my voice catching at the end. My eyes burned, but my tears knew their place. "And she can't commute thousands of miles to get to work every day,"

The silence crept back in. Maz looked blank, lips parted, but lost for words; Ari's features were somehow aggressive and pensive at the same time, an expression I didn't think existed before I met him.

My gaze slid onto my best friend last, and to be honest, I wished I hadn't looked at all.

.

* * *

~ II ~ _ties _~

* * *

.

**AN: **Sorry for any accidental British English spellings; I tried to fix them all but I'm not used to pretending to be American.

By the way, I checked this story's traffic stats and the review count doesn't match up with the number of views by a long shot. It's encouraging to know that so many people decided this sounded interesting enough to read, but feedback would be 100% more useful than a number. Also, I would probably die if that many people reviewed.

\- Leo


	4. III: Wax

**AN: **In case anyone was wondering, the lyrics I used in Chapter 2 were from 'The Phoenix Reborn' by Crown the Empire. I'll probably be using a lot more of their lyrics later on.

This chapter has had to go through some heavy editing and even after all that, I'm not exactly very fond of it, but it was necessary. I hope you guys like it, anyway.

Enjoy.

.

* * *

~ III ~ _wax _~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**t**__-h-r-e-e_

_**III **__:_

_**w**__ a x_

_._

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**i**__f __**i**__ had had the power to prevent my own birth __**i**__ should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions"_

_\- **F**__YODOR __**D**__OSTOYEVSKY_

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* * *

~ III ~ _wax _~

* * *

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_MAX_

_10:12AM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

The days ran by faster than I'd expected. When they were happening – when the sun broke through the clouds and the branches swayed in the breeze – each day felt like it would last forever. And then the next day felt like it would never end. And the next one felt the same… and the one after that… surely the next?

Well, of course not. Nothing lasts forever, however much it feels like it will. And, by the time three weeks had disintegrated, I think I knew that better than anyone.

The guys certainly hadn't been helping me cope with the cold, hard inevitability of change – instead, they'd decided to spit at my sudden fragility and shove everything I'd ever loved about the place where I'd grown up in my face.

That's right; ladies, gents, distinguished guests: the three dimwits I called 'friends' had spent three weeks, give or take, taking me on an excruciating trip down Memory Lane, doing all the things we did as kids and showing me just how perfectly peachy it was to live there (as if I wasn't already painfully aware).

I didn't understand what they were looking to achieve. Trying to convince me not to go would have been a pointless endeavor: it was too late by then and it was initially my mom's choice for us to move anyway. Maybe they were aiming for some kind of big send-off, some enormous metaphorical banner to say 'So long Max, it was nice knowing you'. I'd have preferred if they hadn't, honestly. It would have made it easier on all of us to just hang out two or three times a week, as per usual, and then rip the band-aid off when I was just about to leave.

However, we were talking about _my _friends here, and I didn't tend to gravitate towards particularly 'nice' people. Also, that day was the last day I would be able to spend a substantial amount of time with them because mom wanted Ella and I to get more involved during the last week. This meant that, as they were such royal jerkwads, on the morning of August 11th, they called to tell (not ask, _inform_) me that we were going paintballing.

_Paintballing._

You may now be wondering, 'why, Max, what on Earth is wrong with paintballing?' Well, let me take you back a few years – nine years, to be exact, when we were all nearly nine ourselves.

.

* * *

.

"_Are you, Max Martinez, ready to take the ultimate pledge of unbakeable friendship?"_

"_I think you mean 'unbreakable', Ari. 'Un-bray-kuh-ball',"_

"_Shut up, Sam! Max – are you ready?"_

_Three children, somewhere around eight or nine years old, stood in triangle formation around a fourth, the only girl. They were in a wide, shadowy room with a low ceiling, lit only by the candles held by the three boys. The girl was holding a candle too, on a tiny bronze-colored plate, but this one was unlit. Her companions seemed to have dressed up for the occasion, each wearing some type of garb resembling black cloaks; another of these garments lay in a heap at the girl's feet._

_The little girl sucked in a deep breath. "Yes," she exhaled sharply._

_The boys glanced at each other and nodded somberly. They began to hum softly, padding in slow circles around the girl – Max. The humming gradually intensified, getting louder with each step they took. Once they had completed three circuits, they stopped abruptly and reached their candles towards her – she tried to retreat from them, spooked by the fire, but there was nowhere to go._

"_Max Martinez, daughter of Valencia, sister of Ella – are you prepared to become best friend of Ari, Sam and Maz, and stay their friend until the end of time?"_

"_I will," she whispered._

"_I am," muttered the boy behind her. The one to his right, the one who hadn't spoken yet, elbowed him in the waist._

"_I am," she amended._

"_Are you prepared to stand with us, through thick and thin, fire and ice, in sickness and in health?" ("Isn't that, like, the marriage thing?" Mazin whispered. Sam paid him in kind with a jab to the ribs.)_

"_I am."_

"_And, if you should ever be called to battle, will you stand and fight with us? Will you raise your paintball gun to the sky and say, 'I am Max Martinez, daughter of Valencia, sister of Ella, best friend of Ari, Sam and Maz, and our flame of friendship will never go out'?"_

_She seemed to contemplate this for a moment, staring cautiously at the candle in her hands. "I will," she answered._

_The boys nodded solemnly again and held their wicks to hers for a few seconds, to be sure it had caught alight, then moved back a couple of steps and shuffled around her one more time _– _four circles. Wicked grins spread across the boys' faces as they watched the girl hold up the candle, transfixed in awe. She was silent and unmoving for a while, absolutely spellbound, until her clouded eyes began to clear and a similar smile to the boys' – her friends' – lit up her face._

"_What now?" she asked hoarsely._

"_Now," said Ari, pulling his hood down to reveal a mop of messy brown hair, "we test your promise."_

_The other two mirrored him by removing their hoods as he produced four small red squares from his cloak and held them out: tickets or passes of some sort. He turned them around so the text faced Max._

_Paintball._

_Suddenly, the room was flooded with light and the thick aroma of exotic food. The kids groaned and covered their eyes, shocked by the acute brightness, having adjusted to the dark. As the shadows retreated, it became apparent that they were in a basement, and their cloaks were just bath robes._

"_Mazin, you little monkey," chided a brown-skinned woman, standing at the top of the steps, "what have I told you about standing around in the dark down here? You will ruin your eyes. And don't play with candles!"_

"_Mo-om!" cried one of the boys. Mazin. He definitely took after her, appearance-wise._

"_Alright, I'm going. Lunch is ready, kids. Bring those candles with you – carefully! – so I can put them out," she called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the door._

"_Thanks, Mrs. Nourahmed," the children chorused, sans Maz. They stood silently for a few moments, emotionally taxed after their 'ceremony'. The 'cloak' on the floor caught the girl's eye, and then, realizing it was for her, she picked it up with her free hand and swung it over her shoulder. Her small fingers clutched it tightly, more attached to what it symbolized than the material itself._

"_Paintball later, then?" Ari pouted, heading for the stairs._

"_Paintball later," Max agreed, beaming around at them; infecting her new friends with a wild, giddy feeling. And, after that, they couldn't stop: they grinned over lunch, they laughed as they ran free on the paintball course; Ari and Maz carried on smiling even when Max and Sam won; their eyes twinkled at dinner in their respective homes, and the four of them fell asleep that night still glowing like the candles Mazin had found in Mrs. Nourahmed's bedroom._

.

* * *

.

Our friendship had begun with paintball, and it would end with paintball.

I was sure they'd realized that, which was what frustrated me the most. I mean, thanks, guys, really – way to bring it all crashing down on me. Genius, I tell you. Ya couldn't have wished for better friends in the whole wide world. [Insert peeved sigh.]

They had declared that this Trip of Doom would be happening at 2PM that day and that Sam would be picking me up, so I didn't have to worry about driving and I still had a few hours to steel myself. Of course, mom wasn't going to object to me spending some of my last moments (in Arizona, I mean. My last moments _in Arizona_... I think) with the guys I'd grown up with, but she was sure as Hell going to take advantage of the leftover hours before and after to get me involved with the moving process.

"Honey, could you start working on that pile over there? Thanks, sweetie," she said, motioning with her wrist at a couple of stacks of cardboard boxes by the kitchen entrance. She was carrying one of the larger boxes outside to load onto the moving truck. Don't ask me why we were having our stuff moved over to New York a week early – apparently, her wacko company had arranged temporary accommodation already, where we'd be staying until we found somewhere to live. Mom said she'd found a few nice places online that we could afford, so we'd go and view them before school started.

One of the movers, a friendly African-American woman called Dolly, came in through the hall after mom had left. She was helping us pack the boxes onto the van while her business partner, Lain, manned the steering wheel (not that he was going anywhere). I'd probably have been bothered that I was wearing an old, colossal off-white tee, a pair of ancient, crusty sweats and some tight, mud-encrusted black shoes as paintball gear, or that I hadn't brushed my teeth yet and my hair desperately needed a wash, but I was too tired to care. I'd likely never see either of them again anyway; we were only sending off stuff that we wouldn't be able to fit in mom's car on Sunday.

"So," she said anticipatively, picking up two smaller boxes and placing one on top of the other in her arms, "City of New York, huh? I've got a niece there."

I was still trying to shuffle a couple of boxes off the rest of the stack. I huffed, pushing them back on and trying a different tack. "Huh. Maybe I'll meet her," I shrugged. It would be nice to have some connections, to not be plunging into the unknown completely, but I wasn't all that concerned about meeting the random niece of a mover lady I hardly knew.

"I don't know; it's pretty big, but she's in high school too, so I guess you might," she mused, trailing off. "Her name's Monique," she added, politely trying not to notice me having trouble. I didn't care too much if she watched or not, I was going to get those damn boxes out if it killed me. "It's a pretty big move – AZ to NY."

"Yeah, it is," I agreed; now victoriously cradling two medium-sized boxes of my own. "It's for my mom, though, so I'm not _too _mad about it."

She laughed heartily, following me up the path in the front yard. "Not _too _mad – you can't just be totally chill about this kind of thing, I guess. You're what, seventeen? You'd be starting the last stretch of the 'best four years of your life' on the 25th then, right?"

"I thought that was college," I answered, a small smile creeping up on me as we placed our boxes gently into the back of the van. "I do at least get a while extra off, 'cause school in NYC starts in September instead."

"A-ha, there's always a bright side," she said, grinning.

That caught me.

I paused, glancing from the ocean of boxes to the house. Ella and mom were just emerging with more of our stuff, chatting cheerfully. Could this move actually be a_ good _thing? I'd written it off from the start, thinking only of everything we'd be leaving behind. We were all happy in Arizona, so mom's promotion really was the only reason we were making the move. But I hadn't even considered that I might be happy in NY too, and I definitely hadn't thought about the (albeit slim) chance that I'd be even happier.

I looked back into Dolly's bright, warm face. She seemed like she really believed it.

"Maybe," I replied.

Or, maybe not.

Just sayin'.

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* * *

~ III ~_ wax _~

* * *

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**AN: **I'm considering rewriting the summary. I like it as is, but it doesn't really say anything about the plot. I don't want anyone to get the impression that this is just about Max going to a new school and making new friends and enemies and then getting asked to prom by Fang or something and living happily ever after and all that jazz, because it's really, really not. Really.

\- Leo


	5. IV: Reunited

**AN: **Hey again. Just wanted to take a second to thank everyone who has reviewed this so far. You've all helped a ton, one way or another, and I couldn't be more grateful.

I hope you all enjoy this.

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* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**f**__-o-u-r_

_**IV **__:_

_**r**e un it__ ed_

.

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**b**__ut the thing about remembering is that you don't forget"_

_\- **T**__IM__** O**__'__**B**__RIEN_

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~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

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_MAX_

_1:54PM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

Segregating our house from the one to the right was a narrow wall made of stone bricks, which stretched the entire length of the house and kissed the sidewalk between the two driveways.

I'd never liked that wall.

It was just a little too tall for me to see over so it always felt restrictive and isolating; almost every other driveway-medial fence on the street (some houses didn't even have them) was at least short enough that you'd have to pretend you were distracted or in a hurry getting into your car, so as not to catch the eyes of the hyper-friendly elderly couple next door. It had been built before mom bought the house, but now it made us look moody and unsociable, or like we hated our neighbors.

I mean, not that we didn't hate our neighbors (I did, at least, for the most part). I was just uncomfortable with the possibility of being pinned as the 'That Family' of the neighborhood. (It was a little ironic, really; I'd never been one to throw myself under the spotlight, but I always managed to end up in it anyway.)

Plus, it was one of those crack-riddled, moss-crawling walls that cast a shadow right at the end of the driveway, where you could just tell something was about to lunge out from, but you had no idea what – an ax murderer, or a little cat, maybe. I often found myself searching for a fat blue worm with a red scarf, asking me to come inside and have a nice cup of tea, like in _Labyrinth. _

That was definitely one of the scarce few things of which I was glad to be ridding myself.

A thick wooden gate speared out from the side of our house into the wall. We had no garage, so we had to have something to make it awkward for burglars to make off with our car. I balanced on that gate then, with my palms sitting on the back of the top beam and my ankles wrapped recklessly around one of the lower beams.

Despite my intermingling terror, anxiety and white-hot fury, I was actually sort of looking forward to paintballing. It had been so long since Sam and I had been able to gloat about completely creaming the others, I'd almost forgotten what it felt like. I say 'almost' for a reason, of course – I still beat the crap out of them at everything else, so I never quite forgot the sweet, glorious taste of winning.

I heard Sam's truck pulling up before I saw it. Granted, I was staring obliviously at that wall again (still waiting for the worm), but I would have heard it first even if I'd be avidly tracking all activity on the street with my hawk-like brown eyes the whole time – it was one of those creaky vans that had rust around the fenders and sputtered a little every so often.

It wasn't really Sam's truck, it was his dad's. I wouldn't have snorted so obnoxiously every time I saw it if it had been any old truck that he had to borrow; the car I used was my mom's after all, but it was a business truck. The guys and I didn't laugh at that, in and of itself, either. It was actually pretty respectable that his dad had managed to set up a successful business of his own, however small. But it was a plumbing company.

It was a plumbing company whose logo was a cartoon plumber's ass.

Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, Sam's plumber father and his plumbing buddies had embraced the crack-flaunting stereotype so openly that they'd plastered a picture on the sides of all their company vans of a guy with his neck stuck under a sink and a pair of bootcut jeans that really didn't fit.

I slid off the gate, still having a fit about that logo, and made my way over to the rumbling white van. It was even worse up close because there were small details you couldn't see from afar. Oh my God, I'm telling you, it was _hairy _and everything. I could barely get a grip on the door handle while trying to stifle my hysterics with the opposite wrist. I could feel the first hot pricks of tears by the time I finally yanked the door open and clambered up onto the gray seat.

Predictably, Sam was sulking in the driver seat, scowling at my house through his window with his arms folded tight. He always got pissy at us for laughing at his dad's business logo, 'cause it was actually supposed to be a joke, and he didn't like that we were 'succumbing' to his dad's lousy humor or something.

As I strapped myself in and slammed the door shut, my raucous whooping had died down into gentle snickering.

"I'm… I just…" I wheezed, scrambling to reconcile with him just enough that he'd start driving already. We had a schedule. "I'm… I can't, Sam, you know full well what a child I am,"

Right then, I burst into a fresh set of shrieks, doubling over, almost thwacking my forehead on the dashboard. Somehow, that worked better than my pseudo-apology; not that you would have to make a very strong case to trump 'I'm… I just… I can't'.

He used the corner of the street that my house was built just off as space to make a U-turn, then began driving back the way he'd come with a faint smile on his face. "Yes, Max, I know. Butt equals funny, hairy backside make Max go 'ha, ha, ha',"

"Oh my–" My stomach ached in protest as I filled the car with noise again. I couldn't stop for minutes longer, and somewhere along the way, Sam joined in. I sighed loudly as our laughter died down, gently bumping my forehead on the window and staring out at the houses that whipped past. "I'm not sorry, you know. 'Butt' does equal funny; you just don't want to admit it because you're bitter about us liking your dad," I murmured into the glass.

"Maybe I am," he said. A little growl bled into his voice and his grip on the wheeled tightened a fraction. "You know how I feel about my dad, and that's that."

I sighed again, more moodily this time, adding a fringe-blow for extra 'hormonal-teenage-girl-just-after-waking-up' effect. "And you know how _I _feel about dads, too, Sam. I'm not going to be all 'I don't have a dad so anyone who does automatically has it better than me', but I think you'd be a lot happier if you stopped skirting around your relationship with him and just… I don't know, _talked _to him about it or something," I shrugged, smooshing my face into the window.

(Just FYI – car-window face-smooshing = not a good idea. Bumpy roads are a health hazard. I'd have a bruise by morning, likely.)

Sam chuckled, making a turn I knew well, into the commercial district. I'd taken this route so many times, I could drive here blindfolded – provided all vehicles, pedestrians and animals had mysteriously disappeared first. That was mostly because it was the way to the area Ari and Maz both lived in, but there were some places along the way that held some meaning to me; the mechanics' workshop, the tattoo parlor, the gym (particularly the hand-to-hand combat clubs) and pool, the pizza place... _I should probably say ciao to all those guys soon, too._

"Skirts? Relationships? Talking about feelings?" Sam said, straining to hold in the unspoken 'maybe you are a girl' comment. I thumped him on the arm, eliciting a yelp of protest and a 'Max! I'm driving! Do you have a death wish?'

"Not all girls are into that, you know," I grumbled, returning (at a safe distance) to my window-watching, "and there's nothing wrong with girls who are, either,"

"I didn't say there was," he shrugged. Man, sometimes boys can be so butt-brained.

"No," I pressed, using the dangerously slow tone I'd picked up from mom ("Max, why is the ceiling below the bathroom dripping?" "Max, where are my fundraiser cookies?" "Max, care to explain why I found your report card in the toaster?"), "but you implied that femininity is a _must_ for women. It's okay for girls to be feminine if they want to, but the issue is that we shouldn't be forced to conform if we _don't_ want to,"

Sam shifted nervously. "Alright, alright, I didn't mean any of that. I just meant that you were using, uh… stereotypically girly kind of… uh, language," he finished, throwing in an awkward laugh in a hopeless attempt to diffuse the tension. I had long since ditched my love affair with the window in favor of fixing a challenging glare on the side of his face.

"Stereotypes, huh? You realize that, by definition, stereotypes are a kind of prejudice? And, for Christ's sake, drop the laugh. It makes you sound like you don't care that women are subjected to gender-based oppression and discrimination on a daily basis," I spat bitterly, "I mean, you probably don't, but you'd go farther if you pretended, at least,"

"I – I care!" he stuttered, his usually pleasant tortoiseshell eyes darting between me and the road. "It's… agh, _despicable _that you're not… treated like you… like people, sometimes,"

Pfft. His wording was sloppy, his syllables drawled too much and I didn't hear a 'sorry' in there anywhere. He was going to have to do a Hell of a lot better than that if he expected me to let that one slide.

"Right, uh-hmm," I said casually, propping my elbow on the door and cupping my chin in my hand. I stared off into the cloud-strewn sky and popped in a dreamy sigh for shits and giggles. "Hey, d'you think Ari would mind teaming with me this time?"

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* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

.

"Aaalright, we are here," Sam announced abstractedly, lining the truck up with the parking lines. I leapt down from the seat before I could be trampled by an excitable Ari or Maz, who clambered out over the manual gear shift. The gravel gave a satisfying crunch under my feet and the cool air was a relief after being in a stuffy, noisy van for so long. I inhaled deeply, spinning in lazy circles across the parking lot, reveling in its familiarity.

It looked mostly the same as it had the last time I'd been there. There were quite a few more trees, the buildings had been repainted and the lot had been extended by a couple of rows – I supposed their business had taken off, then – but everything was right where I remembered it being, and the pre-paintball buzz was definitely still there.

"Whooooa," Maz breathed, mimicking my circles, but wider, like he was performing a ballet.

I laughed, unable to contain my carefree, childish grin. "So, who's ready to lose to me, one last time?"

I wheeled around and absorbed my friends' expressions like I had on _that _ the faint smiles, they all seemed to have taken it the same – a little surprised, a little nostalgic, a little hollow. This time, though, we weren't going to let the soul-crushing undertones of sudden separation get the best of us. This was going to be a day of empty canisters and dirty plays and mud in places where mud shouldn't be, and my name wasn't Max Martinez if we weren't going to have _fun._

"I am," Ari said, reaching out a downturned hand and fastening a stony look on me, "for old times' sake,"

"Yeah, me too," agreed Maz, a bittersweet smile forming as he slapped his hand down on top of Ari's, "except the losing part. I wouldn't bank on that one this time, Max,"

Sam and I glanced at each other and skeptically raised our eyebrows in unison. "Oh, you wouldn't? And why's that?" he prodded, adding his hand to the stack much more gently than Maz had.

"Well," Maz began, raising his eyebrows as well, but in more of a knowing, regal, 'thou art beloweth me' way, as he turned to share a look with Ari, "you can't beat someone who's not there,"

The two of them skidded around on the gravel and rocketed across the parking lot, weaving nimbly through the vehicles even though they could have just gone around them – obviously showing off – and disappeared through the green-tinted glass double-doors. I gaped after them for a moment and a laugh broke free from my mouth because that was just so… so _Ari and Maz, _but then a more sinister thought crossed my mind.

I hadn't put my hand in. That was something we'd always done, after seeing it in teen drama movies over a bijillion-and-one times: we each put a hand in the middle to make a pile, and then lifted them up together, like a team. But this time, they did it without me.

And so it began.

After grabbing our jackets and locking the van, Sam and I made our way towards the entrance, taking in the atmosphere. My stomach, earlier full of figurative butterflies, had since been colonized by an enraged swarm of wasps. Those poor, innocent butterflies hadn't stood a chance as we pulled up into the parking lot. That feeling, a feeling of overwhelming dread, swamped almost everything else I felt then, but nothing could have quashed the exhilaration of passing through those doors.

We were sixteen when we were last there, Ella's age – that was a little over a year, so we could probably expect at least a few of the same employees to be around. I hoped so.

Ari and Maz were at the front desk, handing in the tickets they'd pre-bought. I vaguely recognized the receptionist – her name had been Sandy or Sandra or something of the like – but I hadn't really gotten to know her that well during the (very many) times we'd been there before, so I wasn't bothered about saying goodbye. I hung back with Sam on the stiff brown rug in front of the door, habituating myself while we waited.

The reception area was a relatively large room, as far as reception areas go, but not so big that it would take away from the other, more important and purpose-related spaces. It had four doors: the ones we'd just come through, one to the left leading to a medical room, one behind the desk to the right leading to an office area, and a set directly ahead of us, leading to the Holy Grail.

I snapped out of my autopilot escape route analysis as a red, undone wristband was waved in my face. I snatched it out of Maz's hand and held it up to the light, as if checking whether it was real or not. Mock-satisfied with its legitimacy, I turned to my comrades, pulling the most serious-looking face I could muster.

"This is it, gents. This is the day. This is the day that mice become men; the day that saps become soldiers, half-wits become heroes and wimps become warriors," I announced, tilting my chin up imposingly.

"Hear, hear!" Sam exclaimed, raising his fist. As the other two followed suit, I noticed Sarah or Samantha or whatever roll her eyes good-naturedly as she tapped away at her keyboard. She must have remembered us too, along with our skylarking and shenanigans. That was pretty cute, I had to admit. I decided to bid her farewell on my way out after all; what harm would that do?

"Are you ready, men?" I demanded, still using my military general voice.

There was a cheer of 'ma'am, yes, ma'am', but somewhere underneath it, I swore I heard a couple of 'sir's. I turned slowly to Sam, and sure enough, he stood petrified after realizing what he'd done wrong.

"That's _twice _today, soldier," I growled, "You'd better watch your step."

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly, peering at his shoes. _Hmph. That'll do for now._

I turned sharply on my heel and marched straight through the space between one of the cream loveseats and the bistre brown coffee table, my trusty fleet in close pursuit. Apparently, she'd been half-listening to that hearty pep talk because Sally/Sue/Sophia saluted me as we passed by. I shot her a thumbs-up and grinned to myself as I pushed through the main doors.

The space we'd moved into was much larger than the reception area; taller and longer by only a small amount but definitely wider. To our right, there was a small platform with a gaggle of fold-out metal chairs around it, scattered carelessly after a day of having a bunch of camo-clad butts dropped into them. In the centre of the room, there was a suit-up station, consisting of three rows of wooden benches, some racks of protective gear and several shelves of equipment (guns, canisters, etc.); to our left was a small café-and-grill-ish zone _(note to self: drop by there later)_. The whole place was spattered with dark paint and draped in khaki sheets to give it an authentic army atmosphere.

"Hey! You guys got wristbands or–" a strong, commanding female voice rang from near the platform. I broke away from my hungry thoughts to see a young woman with a striking black concave bob cut, shiny maroon lips and a full set of dirty camo gear stop in her tracks. Her eyes widened before she leaned towards us, frowning deeply. "Hey, are you…"

"Mara," I said quietly, half ecstatic, half disbelieving.

Mara, along with a couple of others, was exactly who I'd been hoping would still be there. She was the one we met first all those years ago. She'd been so enraptured with us that she'd taken us on as a sort of class; she let us stick around after games to teach us everything we knew about combining refined technique with animal instinct and balancing practice with preach.

She was an incredible player herself, too. Mara was a head-turner for sure, but when she was out on the field, she moved like a shadow and hunted like a leopard. We'd eventually taken to calling her 'Spot Girl' because of her remarkable camouflage skills.

"Ha!" she whooped, closing the gap between us with a few big strides and pulling the closest of us to her in for a bone-crushing hug (which happened to be Ari and me). "Oh my God, I haven't seen you guys in, what, like a year? Do you know how _poop _it's been around here without my favorite goofballs?" she demanded, growling and popping the 'p's in 'poop' as she shoved Ari and I out of the way and tackled the others.

"I can imagine. Everything that doesn't involve us is automatically poop," Maz consoled, nodding understandingly. He did have a point.

"Hey, do you think we could stop talking about poop?" groaned Sam, struggling to escape Mara's lion grip.

That did the trick. Mara pulled back quickly to scowl at Sam disapprovingly as he stumbled to regain his footing. "You are about to go play paintball, the muddiest and paintiest of all muddy paint-based games, young man. These throwaway poop comments are just a warm-up."

Sam grudgingly pocketed his hands. "We're in Arizona. I don't even know what mud looks like," he grumbled.

Mara rolled her eyes, stepping back to give us a 'my, how you've grown!' look, then stuck her hands in her pockets too. "Right, well, we'd better get you lot in safety gear. I'll run through the health and safety junk after. Snap those wristbands on and I'll get you guys in for the two-forty-five slot," she said, heading over to the benches in the center. As we followed, Maz slipped into stride with Sam.

"It's like dirt, but sloppier," I heard him mumble.

"What is?" Sam snapped quietly. _Huh, _I thought. Maz was like a puppy. Everyone loved him to bits, and you didn't just lash out at him without reason – and when you did, you gave him a pat and a biscuit after to let him know it was still okay.

Sam had been a little… _off_ all day, I realized. He was huffy when I got in the truck (though his reason was normal), then he ploughed right into a controversial topic and panicked when I called him out on it; he slipped up again when we got here and now he was in a mood about being told off, even though it was clear Mara hadn't been serious. I worried about him for a moment, but I didn't want to let myself wonder. I already had an idea as to why he might have been feeling off-kilter and I already didn't like it one bit.

"Mud," Maz offered meekly, glancing nervously sideways at Sam. _Just like a puppy after being scolded, _I thought with a quiet snort.

"Mud? What – I was joking, Maz," Sam explained blandly.

"I thought so," said Maz, frowning contemplatively. His expression cleared quickly, as if making a decision. "I don't get it," he finished confidently, almost proudly, as if he'd brought the stick back to his owner and was waiting for a treat.

"It just – you need water to make mud, and it doesn't…" Sam sighed, "It doesn't rain much here, Maz,"

"No, it doesn't," Maz agreed knowledgeably, still not getting it.

I shook my head, smiling softly as I listened to Sam agitatedly trying to get Maz to laugh at it. However, said dog-boy was either running by different agenda or just really couldn't put two and two together. (I voted for the latter.)

At least I knew there was one thing that would never change.

.

* * *

~ IV ~ _reunited_ ~

* * *

.

**AN: **I'm trying to set a realistic amount of chapters in Arizona, and I promise we're almost there. Just a couple more to go and then the plot will be able to take off. I have Chapter 5 already written; this chapter turned out to be over 6000 words but I decided to split it roughly in half 'cause school's just starting for me, so updates will probably be even more irregular. Bah humbug.

\- Leo


	6. V: Reignited

**AN: **Let's all take a moment to be thankful for school. Without it, we would forget why we have weekends. :)

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* * *

~ V ~ _reignited _~

* * *

.

_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r __**f**__-i-v-e_

_**V **__:_

_**r**__ ei gn it ed_

.

_**c**__hapter __**q**__uote:_

"_**t**__here is nothing __**i**__ would not do for those who are really my friends. __**i**__ have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature"_

_**\- J**__ANE __**A**__USTEN_

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* * *

~ V ~ _reignited_ ~

* * *

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_MAX_

_3:23PM, Aug 11_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

Once I was out there, it all came naturally to me.

Stalking through the underbrush was a piece of cake. Dodging paint pellets was second nature. Ticking my opponents off the figurative hit list one by one felt as normal and instinctive as breathing.

Memories of doing this a million times before came trickling back into my head too, bit by bit, triggered by little things – finding myself on a gravel path and remembering to lift my foot in a high arc and step heel-first to reduce noise; diving for a pre-placed bunker and remembering to tuck in my elbows between snap-shoots. On one hand, it had only been a year, which obviously wasn't enough time for my skills and expertise to dissipate completely. On the other, it had been a whole year, which obviously was enough time for me to get rusty, so I definitely wasn't expecting to be able to slip back into it so easily. Even just a few rookie slip-ups would've been more realistic.

From coming here so much in the past, the guys and I knew how the game slots worked. If you weren't with a party of twelve or more, you'd enter the arena with any other available party of under twelve, so that people didn't have to wait to play so much. They did have different areas designated for different game modes, but only ones that required specific structures or landscapes, like Fort Defence or King of The Hill; they used that to filter teams sometimes too, but the main area was best for most game types. Perfect, in fact, for a simple elimination game, which we were playing first.

I couldn't remember any of my favorite routes exactly, so I was just meandering for the moment – meandering very stealthily, I might add. I wasn't an idiot. Occasionally, I'd find some sort of landmark – a fallen tree, a big, funky-looking rock – and I'd head in any direction that seemed familiar. I figured most beginners would take cover in the woodland area, so that's where I'd decided to hunt. I brushed up against the trees as I crept my way inward, breathing in cool air. I decided that I liked the smell of forests.

It was quite nice to be alone out there. My stomach had shot up into my throat and my heart had dropped straight through my ass when Sam had suggested that we fly solo this round, but I was actually enjoying the peace. As it happened, there were a lot of things you didn't notice when you were guarding someone else's back, like the insane amount of tiny flies trundling around in the air or the miscellany of feathers strewn across the forest floor. I'd also decided that I liked birds.

The scent of rain was drifting its way lazily through the trees. I could hear running water somewhere nearby, mingling with the soft crunch of leaves, dirt and rocks under my sneakers and the occasional bird call. I'd always rolled my eyes when mom nagged me to 'get some fresh air', but I had to admit, the forest air did have a certain crisp, earthy quality that settled on my tongue and in my throat every time I inhaled.

Wait, back the truck up: running water?

Having a river running through a paintball course would've just been dangerous, and I was _so sure _that some freaking _sinks _had sprouted up from the forest floor. Yeah, uh-huh. Because that happens.

I froze behind a tree to my immediate right, crouching lower on the balls of my feet, frowning as I turned my head to see if I could locate the source. It sounded like it was coming from up ahead somewhere and, if my ears were to be trusted, a little to the right. I slinked through the foliage in a general north-east direction, keeping an eye over my shoulder and staying covered as much as possible.

I had to pause at some points because the noise stopped or dwindled to a trickle, but I found out what was going on soon enough. Some idiots were messing around in the dirt with a water bottle and, upon closer inspection; they appeared to be making mud. If I couldn't tell who they were through their masks, I could sure tell after that. Now all that was to be decided was: to shoot, or not to shoot?

Ha. Ha-ha, ha.

"What the–" the guy on the right yelled, standing up abruptly and searching furiously for the reason his safety vest was now soiled with bright red paint. He caught sight of me and raised his gun, but I skidded to the left and dropped behind a bush.

"You can't shoot once you've been shot, mate," the guy next to him sighed, trading his precious mud for higher air as well. "We're out. Nice job, Max,"

I emerged from my makeshift bunker, grinning deviously. "Thanks," I laughed. Maz had never been one to take losing too hard. Ari, on the other hand…

"I can't believe you'd do that, Max!" he growled, thrusting his free arm into the air to show that he'd been shot. Maz followed suit. "I thought we were friends,"

"And I thought we weren't teaming up." I raised an accusatory brow that they probably couldn't see through my goggles anyway.

"We weren't!" Maz defended quickly. "We were just temporarily trucing in the name of scientific and social experimentation,"

"'Scientific and social experimentation'? You mean… pouring your water on the ground to see if you could make mud?"

"Yes and no. Yes, we were trying to make mud. And we did, see?" Maz continued, proudly gesturing to his mud. "But no, that's not it. We were going to put some of it in the bottle and show it to Sam,"

I snorted. Despite my grin, however, I was sliiightly concerned for Maz's wellbeing.

"You got that he was kidding, though, right?"

"Oh yeah," Maz nodded enthusiastically, "we just wanted to see what he'd do. Hence 'social experimentation',"

"Well, first of all, I think he'd point his gun at Max," said a voice from behind me.

_Crap._ I'd been so busy talking to Ari and Maz that I'd forgotten to keep an eye out for other opponents! I surged for cover behind the same bush I'd used to hide from the first two, but on the other side this time, raising my head just above the vegetation to eye up my new attacker: Sam, of course. His gun was still aimed at me, but it was against the rules to shoot at other players' heads and, as that was the only part of my body visible, I felt pretty confident.

"And then I think he'd alert her of his presence and fail to shoot in time before she got to cover," I finished for him, flashing a smirk.

"And then she'd get cocky before realizing that they were at a terrible stalemate because neither of them could shoot unless she stopped being a wuss and scooted out from behind her beloved bush," he countered smoothly. Unfortunately for him, he was completely wrong. He couldn't shoot me because all he could see was my head, but he was standing right out in the open. All I had to do was make sure he didn't notice me trying to line up a shot through the leaves.

"Are you sure about that?" I said in a low tone, buying time. I couldn't shoot through the thick of the bush or the pellet would explode inside it. The top of the bush was less dense and easier to aim through, but I'd have to be careful not to rustle the leaves. Eye contact was also going to be quite a problem: if I looked down, he'd know I was planning something.

Something miraculous happened then.

"Hey, Sam," Maz called, unintentionally coming to my rescue. Sam looked up at him, granting me a few seconds to look down and adjust my paintball gun towards his chest. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping he wouldn't move. "We made you something," he said. I assumed Maz was indicating to the brown slop on the floor because Sam's head rolled back and he let out a 'not this again' groan. _Well, Sammy-boy, I'm afraid you're about to feel even worse._

"You never answered my question," I smirked as I pulled the trigger. _Smack. _Bullseye.

He stood in silence for a moment, head still tilted back, before slowly lowering his head to look at his chest. A pool of crimson had bloomed there. His lips peeled apart but he stayed silent, apparently stunned.

"Now, if you boys will excuse me," I began, coughing lightly and brushing my knees off as I stood, "I have places to be and opponents to eliminate. The base is that way, and you might want to keep your hand up so you don't catch any bruises on the way back from people who don't realize you've already _lost. _Oh, and close your mouth, honey. Flies are attracted to bullshit,"

Then I turned and stalked off in the opposite direction from the main building, silently praising myself for that snazzy improv. Not that it was a big deal; I'm generally a rather snazzily-spoken person anyway. Snazzily? Is that a word? MS Word says no, Google says… hold up, gimme a minute… Oh. Google also says no. Okay, maybe not then, but we'll just tuck that into the Complete Dictionary of Maxism (not to be confused with Marxism) for future ref. What's that? Oh, oops, that's just my VDEISA – (Very) Deeply-Embedded Inner Sensible Adult – telling me to 'stop breaking the fourth wall and get on with the damn story, you knucklehead'. Jeez, no need to be so rude about it.

Okay, where were we? Ah. We were flouncing off into the depths of the woods to kick some beginner booty – just what I like to hear. Now, are you all sitting comfortably? (Not you, Graham. I don't care about you.)

Then let's continue.

.

* * *

~ V ~ _reignited _~

* * *

.

"Uuhm," Sam hummed, pausing to think. He leaned forward abruptly, resting his elbows on his knees and loosely crossing his wrists.

We were sitting on the grass next to the parking lot, waiting for Ari and Maz to finish wazzing or something. They'd taken so long we'd resorted to playing a couple rounds of 'Would You Rather', which was odd because I thought boys were supposed to pee quickly, but whatever.

"I would ratheeer…" he began, dragging out the syllables to give himself time to think. He looked over at the big paintball building, his chestnut-brown hair ruffling in the light wind. "Wait, if no one shows up at my wedding, can I even get married? Would the bride and the, uh, the Priest or whoever show up?"

I pondered this for a moment. "No. No one means no one," I answered.

He frowned, turning to look at my face. "But that means the funeral one doesn't work either, because if no one but me was there, I wouldn't even get buried. My coffin would just sit there forever, in the middle of the graveyard," he argued, wrinkling his nose.

"Technically, there'd be no one to put your coffin in the graveyard," I laughed, raising my eyebrows and hugging my knees to my chest.

He hummed again, studying my face. The way he looked at me gave me a weird feeling; he looked like he was considering something, so I squared my gaze straight back, hoping to make him uncomfortable too.

A small smile spread on his face and he sat back, still looking at me, but with less intensity. "Well that was a stupid question," he said bluntly.

My laughter was muffled slightly because my lower jaw was against my knees, but my smile was evident.

"Why don't you think of one, then, Mr My-Questions-Are-Better-Than-Yours?"

"I never said my questions are better than yours. I just said that yours are poop," he shrugged.

I snorted at his immaturity. "It's your turn anyway," I pressed, reaching out and poking him in the bicep.

"Pfft, fine," he huffed, mimicking my leg-hugging. "Would you ratherrr… would you rather go back in time, to meet your great-great-great-grandparents, or go forward to meet your great-great-great-grandkids?"

I frowned. That question _was_ better than mine – not that I was going to tell him that. "Future, obviously," I said in a 'duh' tone, "We already know what's happened in the past, that's why we have historians, and if I want to know who in my family was doing the deed a few hundred years ago, I can go to ancestry dot com,"

Sam laughed, turning towards me again with that same weird look on his face. "When you put it like that," he said defensively.

"You would've said past, wouldn't you?" I accused, narrowing my eyes and screwing up my nose.

"How could you tell?" he grinned.

"Partly because it was all in your voice a minute ago," I said, "You sounded like I'd insulted you. But mostly 'cause you're just weird like that."

He shuffled towards me a little and suddenly I really wished Ari and Maz would hurry up. I looked to my wrist to check the time, but my watch wasn't there. I could tell it had been a few hours, though, from the length of the games – most of which, unsurprisingly, I won – and the color of the sky.

I didn't understand why I felt so flighty all of a sudden. I'd started fidgeting without even realizing at some point; my mouth was dry, my throat restricted and my palms sheening slightly with sweat. And I felt… guilty. That was the worst part, 'cause I couldn't work out what I might've done to make me feel remorseful or ashamed. Just a minute ago, Sam and I had been playing dumb games and joking around, and now the back of my neck was burning.

Speaking of Sam, he'd somehow inched even closer to me across the cool grass without me noticing. I was sure I felt him looking at me, but I didn't want to engage after stumbling through silence for so long.

"Hey, Max?" he said softly. I still didn't want to talk, but it wasn't like I could pretend I didn't hear him. "There's something I've been meaning to say for a while now,"

He went quiet after that, as if deciding it could wait a little longer. Part of me was happy that he stopped, but part of me was stubbornly curious, and that was usually what drove me to open my mouth in any situation.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he echoed. His pause afterwards told me that this was something he clearly didn't want to rush. "I think I've known for a little longer than a while, actually. If I'm honest, I don't really know why I haven't said it yet. It wasn't that I was making excuses or lying to myself or anything. It just hasn't happened yet,"

His pausing had rubbed off on me, and it took me a while to reply. "You are honest. That's a Sam thing,"

"A 'Sam thing'?" he grinned questioningly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, there are some things that are just really… you. Really Sam. Sometimes they're not even things you do or say, just things that remind me of you," I explained slowly, frowning deeply the whole time.

"That is absolutely adorable," he rumbled, and I looked up to find him staring at me with the same intense, almost angered, fascination you might have for a little puppy who just sneezed. "Oh my God, Max, I don't think you even realize how cute that is. I guess that's a Max thing, huh? Obliviousness,"

I gave him a look somewhere between a frown and a smile.

"Hey, Max? Would you like to go on a date with me?"

…

…

…

_Oh._

The neck-burning and hand-sweating and throat-closing were back with a vengeance.

A… date? A _date_?

A what now?

My thoughts fell all over each other and heck if there was any chance of me organizing them when he was looking at me like that. His hand was suspiciously close to mine, fingers hovering off the ground as if waiting for a cue to make their advance. If he was under the impression that I would give that signal, all I could say was not to hold his breath.

See, I had this… condition, let's say, that caused me, in times of great distress or surprise, to panic like a deer in the headlights and spit out the first thing that came into my head.

This terrible affliction was clearly not planning on giving me a break that night.

"How much would you be willing to bet that Ari and/or Maz are taking a dump right now?"

Aaaaaand there you have it, folks.

Ah, it's good to be me.

.

* * *

~ V ~ _reignited _~

* * *

.

**AN: **I'm pumped up on caffeine and I've never really written much romance before so I hope it wasn't terrible. [Sarcastic TV voiceover guy tone] Tune in next time for another immensely exciting episode of _The World: According to Max._ Haha I'm kidding; there will actually be a shred of plot in the next chapter*. Hallelujah!

\- Leo

*Joking again. Surprise – this story doesn't have a plot! Wow, sorry, I am so sorry. Shut up, Leo. There _will _be plot in the next chapter, but I mean that there have kind of been bits and pieces from these first few which are plot-ish. More foreshadowing than anything, maybe, but I don't write without reason.


	7. VI: Bound

**AN: **So, it's been over a month… uh, sorry? But here's an extra-long chapter with bonus sibling fluff and teenage angst to make up for it? … Enjoy? :)?

*shrug emoji*

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* * *

~ VI ~ _bound _~

* * *

.

_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r s-i-x_

_VI_ :

_**b**__ o u n d_

.

_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**r**__emember tonight… for it is the beginning of always"_

_**D**__ANTE __**A**__LIGHIERI_

.

* * *

~ VI ~ _bound _~

* * *

.

_MAX_

_8:59AM, Aug 16_

_BUCKEYE, AZ, USA_

I hate being the first person downstairs in the morning. The curtains are all drawn, suffocating the rooms with darkness, and even though you're not a kid anymore, there's still something in the back of your mind telling you to watch out for the monsters behind the couch.

But there was no couch. There was no couch because all furniture that wasn't an immediate necessity had been carted off with all the rest of our domestic crap earlier in the week.

That's right, folks: our last full day in AZ had finally rolled around. The days had stopped running by 'faster than I'd expected' – not because they didn't slip away too quickly anymore, of course they did; I'd just accepted that they'd all be gone before I could blink. And so, we were NY-bound tomorrow, for better or for worse.

After stealthily checking that there were no bloodthirsty beasts waiting for me in the kitchen, I grabbed some supplies and made my way into the middle of the stark-empty living room. _Man, that's weird._ I was going for some nice, safe cereal, obviously, because I would most definitely burn down the house (along with several neighboring houses) trying to fix up anything else.

I sat on the rough-with-wear carpet and carefully ish poured a bowl of Froot Loops. It got boring fast, just sitting there and shoveling multi-grain rainbow hoops into my mouth, but I guess that's what you get when you're used to watching TV with every meal because you're a privileged butt like I was.

Wow, that sounded bitter. I promise I really am trying not to let on too much; I don't want to rush this. I'm just… slightly sensitive about who I used to be. Irked by Max I – wait, ew, no – _Old_ _Max_, so to speak.

With nothing else to do, my mind began to wander from my future – specifically, this Goddamn move – to my past – specifically, Monday. I couldn't stop thinking about Monday. Or, if we're going to get intimately explicit here, I couldn't stop thinking about Sam.

I'm just going to give it to you straight. I know this is going to be difficult for you to process – you might even want to reject the idea completely – but I swear I would never lie to you.

I, the great Max Martinez, had never actually been asked out before that.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe. A stunning, intelligent, athletic, _piercingly _witty (and let's not forget charmingly modest) young lady such as myself, having never _once _received romantic attention? Why, such a travesty should surely be a crime.

Alas, it is true. I'd never been graced with such an invitation prior to Monday. I mean, technically speaking, I _had_ been asked out before that, but nothing I would personally consider worthy of mention; just your average d-bags who thought it was A-OK to go right ahead and harass me while I was clearly busy pretending to do math. Lot of good that did – all either of us had ever gotten out of it was a detention or a big, ugly bruise. I'll leave you to decide who got what.

Naturally, I was flattered. It was refreshing to hear that I wasn't the only one who appreciated my drop-dead good looks for once. However, I think it's also pretty important to note that Sam's timing was abso-freaking-lutely atrocious. Like, what the heck? I understood that he hadn't known the window of opportunity was closing fast, but seriously, if you're going to ask someone on a date, just go for it. It can't be _that _hard.

Well, okay, maybe that's a little unfair. He would have had to consider that I might take it the wrong way and it could mess up our friendship and all that jazz. If he knew it could kick our friendship into the gutter, though, why did he bother asking at all when I was just about to leave? Statistically, most long-distance relationships fail – and sure, 'most' still leaves room for some to succeed, but the idea that we would have pulled through as a long-distance couple was frankly laughable. You'd have to have a pretty strong connection with each other to make it and by the time I was gone, we'd have dated for a week. A _week._

Like I said: ridiculous.

What a nub.

_And _there was also his reaction to my little announcement that I'd shortly be eloping with my remaining dignity to consider, but I didn't really want to think about that. There were few things that hurt me, but betrayal definitely fit the bill.

By the time I finished my internal tirade, I only had a few Loops left and not nearly enough patience to be sitting on the ground anymore.

I'd been packing gradually throughout the week to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I'd left all the sentimental junk for today. I figured if I was going to cry at all, I might as well make it all symbolic and crud and do it right before we left.

After washing the milky remnants of breakfast out of the bowl and chucking said item plus spoon into the dishwasher, I pilfered the box of dry Froot Loops and crept up the stairs. Probably sounds a little harsh to say that I couldn't bring myself to care about waking my mom up, but I was more concerned about prolonging whatever brief peace Ella could salvage before she was flung back into full consciousness with the realization that this giant mess we've made wasn't just a horrible dream. God knows that's what happened to me, and I was not happy about it one bit.

This date – August seventeenth – the move, the milestone, this whole big awful thing, hadn't really seemed real until now. Nothing seems real until you're forced to think about it. It _isn't _real, not until it seeps into your restless mind and taints whatever faintly pleasant thoughts you were having before. It was like I'd been standing in front of a door this whole time, but it had been closed so I didn't think twice about it. Slowly, though, the door had been opening by itself, and now I could see through the sliver of an opening and it made me feel sick. I wanted to kick it shut and close my eyes, but I knew that at some point, soon, I'd have to take hold of the handle and step through. And that was terrifying.

But Max Martinez does not do 'terrified'.

On impulse, after thinking about big, scary doors for too long, I grabbed the door-handle and gave it a violent yank to get into my bedroom. Ah, much better. Remember, kids: if you're ever feeling stressed, try some senseless hostility to calm you down – and if you ever find yourself intimidated by something, all you gotta do is just completely and utterly raze it to the ground! Inhale and exterminate.

I left the cereal box on my nightstand then threw on some sweatpants and a two-tone hoodie before sliding my duffel bag out from under my bed. The digital alarm clock peeking out from behind my stolen cereal read 9:34. Great, that was plenty of time to finish packing and then do absolutely nothing that could be interpreted as productive in the slightest for the rest of the day.

I'd shipped all the big stuff off on Monday and had the rest of my 'whatever' pile crammed into a suitcase, like clothes and books. Yeah, I read. Sometimes. Dolly and Lain were coming back tomorrow to move everything we'd needed to keep for the moment – beds, closets, etc. – and then we'd jam our cases into the trunk and head off into the unknown.

I went through all the drawers in my nightstand and the dresser opposite my bed first. I found a lot of weird old trinkets, most of which I couldn't figure out why I'd kept. What use could anyone possibly have for a porcelain ladybug with a creepy grin? Part of me still didn't want to chuck them though, however pointless, so I went on the hunt for a handy-dandy box to put all the 'What the Hell is this and Why Does It Exist' things in.

Packing flowed in the same way for a couple of hours, during which I heard movement from both of the other bedrooms and I lost countless brain cells. I decided to leave the most sensitive materials I'd retrieved, i.e. photo albums, on my windowsill to buy myself some time on deciding whether I wanted to put my tear ducts on the line or just shove them into my bag and carry them like a big, looming storm cloud for the rest of my life.

Hey, who needs brain cells anyway?

.

* * *

~ VI ~ _bound_ ~

* * *

.

12:00pm, 08/16/14, sitting on the living room floor next to my bubbly half-sister, her sleek violet laptop open in our direction. That's how it began.

_Ow._

"Oh gosh, look at the butterflies!"

_Ouch._

"Ugh, someone, please, take me away from this mundane human life,"

_Holy mother of Mordor!_

"Max, are you even listening?"

"No, Ella, I am not listening to your endless ramblings about the trolls or the trees or whatever it is you're on about this time, because _some of us _are dealing with serious issues right now,"

_Gah…_

"Um, rude much? Whoa, Max, you look super pale. Are you alright?"

_Deep breaths, Max._

"Uh, no…"

_In and out._

"Oh man, I'm gonna go call mom. Stay here, okay?"

_Grghhnnff._

"I don't think… I have… a choice,"

_Ohhh dear._

_Um, pain is just a message, and I'm hitting ignore? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Do any of these psychological pain-relief techniques actually work? Uh… oh, God… one sheep, two sheep, three sheep…_

_Dammit!_

Ella ran off and my senses suddenly decided to hone in on the TV.

A girl, flying, flinging mud at little gnome things. Oh, right – Ella had talked me into watching Disney's _Maleficent _with her.

I didn't normally think too highly of fantasy. You're expected to just blindly believe in every mystical creature and place and law of magic they throw at you because, I don't know, it's _magical_ or whatever. _It just works like we're telling you it works, okay? Plus, like, YOLO, or something_. I had to admit, though: flying around like that, so fast and free, completely untouchable… I could definitely live with that.

I could live with that, at least, if I even survived this skull-splitting headache and these stabbing pains between my shoulder blades.

"Hey mom, uh, something's up with Max," Ella's voice echoed around me, distant and hollow like a shout into a cave. I scrunched up my eyes and the thunderous vibrations from inside my ears washed it away, a tsunami of sound.

Pain shot up and down my back like an electric current, pressing and pulsing violently against my spine, setting my skin ablaze.

It was hardly a pinch compared to the crushing sensation in my head. I couldn't remember anything before the hands; hands, wrapped around my head, squeezing with the force of a car compactor. Hands, flashing behind my eyelids, reaching for my neck. I couldn't imagine anything after them. Hands. I couldn't breathe. Hands.

I slipped into the darkness.

Hands.

.

* * *

~ VI ~ _bound_ ~

* * *

.

I took my time waking up after that. Mom had apparently rushed home from her last day at her workplace to check I was okay – which I was not – and she and Ella had forced me into a kind of semi-conscious limbo as they helped me up the stairs and into bed. I'd been able to slur out a weak "'tis but a scratch" before going under again, so I guess they deduced that I didn't need an ambulance from my unerring ability to crack a good ol' Shakespeare joke.

"Max? Max, honey, are you awake?"

"No,"

"Oh, thank goodness," my mom rolled her eyes and folded her arms. She'd pulled a chair up next to my bed and there was a surfeit of first-aid items and a glass of water on my nightstand. The Froot Loops were on the floor. "I thought you were going to wake up sooner or later. I was terrified,"

I coughed out a small laugh and her amused expression sapped away. "I'm fine,"

"Are you sure? I could postpone the trip a couple days to give you time to rest. We've got time,"

"I'll be alright, ma, it was just a headache," I protested, sitting up slowly. I winced as my throbbing head decided to prove my point. Mom frowned, leaning in to examine my scalp and pressing a hand to my forehead to check my temperature.

"Well that was one heck of a headache then. Have you hit your head recently?" she asked, slowly leaning back with a suspicious expression. I shook my head gently. "I hope you're not getting migraines. Are you stressed at all? Anxious?"

I gave her a pointed look. "Am I stressed?"

I left out the part about the excruciating back pains and hand-based hallucinations; migraines were a rational diagnosis, which was more than I could have conjured up.

"Oh," her forehead creased again. "Well, if you're sure you'll be okay tomorrow… I'll keep some medication on hand just in case. And we'll have to take regular stops for Magnolia's sake anyway, so you can get some fresh air then," she seemed to be saying this more for her own benefit, staring off somewhere above my dresser with a calculating eye.

Mom got up from the chair and brushed some imaginary dust off her jeans. I watched with a squinted gaze as she surveyed the chair and medical supplies then turned to leave. "Call if you need me, hon. I love you," she said, before disappearing through the door. Her footsteps faded fast.

I sat for a moment with my head resting awkwardly on the wall behind me. That conversation got me thinking about tomorrow again. I didn't really know what to expect at all; I didn't even know much about New York. I only knew what (some of) it looked like from watching every Marvel movie about any given member of the ridiculous amount of superheroes there ten thousand times.

A whole lot of fumbling to find my AWOL laptop and a handful of crunchy Froot Loops later, said machine was resting on my duvet and whirring from the tragic effort of opening Chrome. Now, where to start? Couldn't go too wrong by typing 'new york city' into Google, I guessed.

Over 1.7 billion results popped up in under a second. _Damn. _OK, first result: nyc-dot-gov. Why not?

Aug 16 – Schools: Not in Session, and a lot going on at some park somewhere. _Red Hook Food Vendors, Asian Fest 2014, Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza… _nothing really stood out. You're up, Wikipedia.

'_New York - referred to as New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part - is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world.'_

Whoa nelly, info-dump much? I scrolled down to see if I could find anything a little more consumable, but it soon became clear that whoever wrote this clearly had a bit too much downtime.

There was an image near the bottom that caught my eye, though – it just looked like it shouldn't be there. The rest of the cited visuals were all related to nearby text somehow, like a photo of a subway train embedded in the transportation section. It was out of place, existing in the face of irrelevance, as if someone had come and… _hidden _it there. Some kind of Easter-egg, maybe, but meant for who?

The picture itself was a small sketch of wings and a bird's tail around a pair of lips, with a finger raised to say 'shush' and a caption that read _'Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'. _For some reason, I found myself intensely frustrated that there wasn't a link anywhere. I just wanted to know more about that stupid picture, but some idiot had decided to attach a completely out-of-context image with an infuriatingly intriguing caption and leave it link-less.

That was it. Some idiot – yeah, it was probably just some kid looking to mess with people. Now that _was _stupid. What was the point of pranking someone if you never got to see their reaction?

I was too proud – or at least too bitter – to comb the page for more clues. I tried to shrug it off as I took the safer route and sifted through Google Images, but it kept bugging me. That caption seemed, I don't know, _important _somehow. All the lights and landmarks in the world couldn't have wiped _The Incident _from my memory.

A glance at the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen told me it was almost time for dinner, which, as always, lifted my spirits immensely. Some normalcy would be nice, I reflected as I snapped my laptop shut and flipped it over to let the fan breathe. We wouldn't have much time for normalcy in the days to come.

Ella had her laptop open on the floor again when I got downstairs, and mom was sweeping around the kitchen, filling three bowls with chicken stir-fry. My sister seemed engrossed in something, so I went into the kitchen to get us drinks. Mom didn't say anything while I ran my hands under the tap; she just sprinkled some sesame seeds over the food and carried two of the bowls over to Ella.

There was some apple juice and milk left in the fridge, so I poured two apples and a glass of water for mom. I brushed past Mrs. Water-is-Nature's-Drink-of-Choice on my way out with the juices, setting them on coasters that hadn't been there a minute ago before surveying Ella's laptop. I was expecting to see something of a _Doctor Who_ ilk, but apparently mom hadn't been able to bear missing a single _News at Six_ because it was our jolly _Arizona National_ newscasters staring back at me.

"So," mom began, sitting down at a small distance, but close enough to see the laptop screen. "How are we feeling about tomorrow?"

I snorted. _We. _Ella gave me a gentle jab to the ribs to stop me going off and ruining our last day in the house – in our _home._

_This wouldn't be our last day here if it weren't for mom. _I was suddenly angry again and just about ready to blow when Ella butted in. She probably felt me boiling next to her; she'd always had some kind of freaky Sixth Sister Sense. _Eugh._

"I'm looking forward to going to a new school," she offered pleasantly. "I'll miss my friends here, but I'll make more."

_That's easy enough for you to say, Little Miss Social Butterfly. _I didn't contribute.

"Of course you will. There'll be plenty of fun kids at your new school," mom agreed. We stayed silent for a few minutes and I presumed mom was weighing the pros and cons of soliciting my opinion, but eventually decided against it. "How about we see what's been going on lately?" she raised her eyebrows at Ella, who shrugged and pressed 'play'.

The news followed its usual pattern: bad, bad, really bad, scary, terrible, sad, cats, bad, fire, bad, worse, good, bad, ugly, school lunches, new iPhone model, bad, awful, bad, Obama. I tuned it out, but I was still glad it was there to occupy mom and Ella and mostly guarantee they wouldn't try to make more conversation.

The stir-fry went down my throat at double speed for a few minutes as I continued intently not listening to the news, until suddenly the news decided to become uncharacteristically interesting and the stir-fry decided it would be fun to go down my clothes instead.

"Oh! Honey, do you want a paper–"

"Mm, mm _mmm," _I hummed forcefully through a mouthful of chicken, flapping my hand to get her to shush.

'_Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'. _That's what they'd said. 'Nulla judicium, nulla deprecatus'.

"– Latin phrase which our linguistics experts here have managed to roughly translate into English as 'no justice, no mercy'. It's unclear as of yet how exactly this group is to be described – an anarchist mob, some kind of guerrilla resistance, or perhaps a simple gang – but one thing is clear: the Gotham Ravens are not the urban legend we once thought them to be." The newsreader – Bobbie Clint or something – concluded, leaving an unfortunately large amount to my imagination. Well, if not an answer, at least I had a lead.

"No, they certainly aren't, Janet," said the balding dude next to her (apparently Bobbie wasn't even close). "Now, for the viewers who may have never heard of this group, here's a little backstory on the case for you,"

"Symbols like the ones pictured in the top right hand corner right now began emerging all over New York City some three years ago," Janet continued. A collage of photographs appeared in the corner of the screen, all focalizing on graffiti of similar symbols – symbols that looked an awful lot like the one I'd found earlier. "Rumors had been circulating for some time beforehand of an NYC-based revolutionist cause, but it seemed that nobody was willing to take them seriously, and eventually it became quite the colloquial joke amongst New Yorkers,"

"Yes, and that's exactly where the myth of the legend originated. You see, it was directly after whispers of an underground rebellion began to crop up that these winged motifs materialized in all corners of the five boroughs, so naturally, these followed suit to become quite the laughing stock as well,"

"And since no one but the supremely suspicious and superstitious took them for anything but a modernized _Boy Who Cried Wolf _tale, the NY-native-nicknamed 'Gotham Ravens' have remained an urban fairy-story in the eyes of the general public ever since,"

"Until now,"

"Until now indeed, Paul," agreed Janet, nodding and staring directly into the camera. My heart sank a little. She had the kind of look on her face that broadcasters only give when they're desperate to hook viewers in; eyebrows raised, head tilted slightly sideways like they know something juicy and important. And they'd used a suspicious amount of fancy words so far. And the segment had already lasted longer than their other bits, none of which had been interesting in the slightest. _And_ they were talking about New York on the Arizona news, which meant there was butt-all going on in our own state to report on…

The longer I thought about it, the more hope I lost. They were probably just trying to start some drama by stirring up a moral panic. These elusive 'Gotham Ravens' were probably nothing, and their mysterious symbols would be few and far between. I'd forget all about it in a week.

"– but is this 'new evidence' actual solid proof, or just more rumors on top of everything we've heard before? We'll leave that for you to decide, Arizona. We'll catch you again tomorrow at six. Goodnight," Hhhhrrmmph. 'You decide'? Yup, definitely just view bait.

I couldn't believe I'd let myself get excited like that. I'd been formulating my own conspiracy theories in my head the whole time, imagining gang logos splattered across abandoned buildings and pairs of wings inconspicuously scratched into brick walls like a… a giant flip-note of deceit. A giant flip-note of deceit that I drew myself, and then flicked through so many times that my own lie had started to consume me.

A month's worth of fury filled my lungs until I couldn't breathe. I'd tried shouldering my mom's glass-half-full attitude, but it shattered in an instant as I realized just how much I didn't want to go to New York.

Next to me, the laptop slammed shut, and Ella rose to her feet with a painfully conflicted look. I watched as she calmly put her bowl, fork and glass into the dishwasher, returned for her computer and disappeared stiffly and silently up the stairs. And then I copied her, footstep for footstep, feeling the buzz of tension in the air build as I lathered my silence on top of my sister's.

Who needs twin telepathy when you have half-sister joint scorn?

I didn't really feel the next few hours. I stayed up way past the time mom usually knocked on my door to say 'get ready for bed', and she didn't come to tell me to turn my light off. I did the opposite. I turned the light up until my eyes stung, and kept myself awake with music and social media. I wanted to be as tired as possible by tomorrow so I'd definitely fall asleep in the car and not have to put up with her.

Ella wandered in at some point, and she was crying. She sat on my bed and sniffled for a while before speaking; she didn't need to tell me what was up because it was up with me too.

"New York…" she muttered at some point. After midnight, probably.

"More like Poo York," I snarled, and she laughed so long that everything seemed like it'd be okay.

We went through my 'sensitive materials' too, by which I mean the photo albums I'd come across earlier, not my undies. We started making snarky nickel-and-dime comments whenever we found one with either Dad: Part Un or Dad: Part Dos in it, which was pretty much the best kind of therapy I could have received, given the circumstances. Some of my personal favorites included: 'nice wig, loser, where'd you get it? The end of a mop?', 'the Pathetic Excuses for Fathers Club called; they want their chairman back' and 'I wonder if he abandoned that puppy he's holding as fast as he abandoned us'.

I couldn't be arsed to feel guilty when we started making fun of mom too. I knew I'd regret some of the things I said later on, but so would Ella, so there was no one to give me a condescending look when I felt sorry and lecture me about being the 'bigger person'. And it felt good to get all those things off my chest, even if I was doing it in a petty and childish way. I'd come to accept that I'd probably never be able to handle anything in any other way than with my trademark petty-and-childish approach.

We did eventually get around to the elephant in the room. It was an uncomfortable thing to skirt around all the time, but obviously I couldn't talk to mom about it without screaming, so sharing honest opinions with someone else that had no choice was actually pretty cool.

I don't like to talk about my feelings. At all. I'm more of a swallow-it-back-down-and-let-it-fester-in-your-stomach kind of gal. I guess I was only willing to open up as much as I did because they weren't mushy feelings; if Ella had wanted to talk about boys or periods or something, I would have carted her right out the door without a second thought. Palpable rage, however, is something with which I have extensive experience. Palpable rage is something I can get behind.

"What happened to 'I'm looking forward to our new school'?" I said with a gentle shoulder-bump.

Ella looked at me like I was a total ass. "You're a total ass, Max." She sighed, shrugging. "I was trying to appease mom. She doesn't really deserve it, but I can't help feeling bad about this rift that's opened up between us," Figures. Ella had always been a little closer to mom than I had 'cause she was a natural softie, so she needed mom to be there more when things got her down.

"I don't want to leave here," I grumbled, fiddling with the hem of my hoodie. "I don't want to leave home. But, I mean, New York… if it had to be anywhere, I guess New York sounds like… fun?"

Eh. I tried.

"Hah, yeah… I have always wanted to go to one of those smoky SoHo jazz lounges," Ella sniffed, flopping against my side and resting her head on my shoulder.

Looking back on it, y'know… I'd lived with her my whole life, but I think that night may well have been the first time I ever really met my own sister.

.

* * *

~ VI ~ _bound _~

* * *

.

**AN: **I feel like Max was OOC – like, atypically observant and reflective. She thinks more than she talks and she's maybe a fraction too stroppy. I'm planning on giving her a big arc where she sort of _transforms _into The Great and Amazing and Totally Humble Maximum Ride, but I still want her to be her the whole way through. What do you think? I'm going to up the sass eventually anyway, but am I even at base-level sauciness yet?

\- Leo


	8. VII: Clandestine

**AN: **Something a little different this time – I tried writing it from Max's POV but I just didn't like it. Also, I'm sorry it's been such a long time since I last updated this; I am trying to be (relatively) consistent, I promise.

Enjoy.

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* * *

~ VII ~ _clandestine_ ~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r s-e-v-e-n_

_VII :_

_**c**__ la nd es ti ne_

.

_**c**__hapter quotes:_

"_**i**__t is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend"_

_ \- _**_W_**_ILLIAM __**B**__LAKE_

"_**f**__or there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first"_

_ \- __**S**__UZANNE __**C**__OLLINS_

.

* * *

~ VII ~ _clandestine_ ~

* * *

.

_TINTED WINDOWS_

_1:46PM, Aug 17_

_GALLUP, NM, USA_

"Testing. Testing. One, two. Beep boop. I have a dream. How come Diddy Kong has the same mouth as Homer Simpson? Is Diddy Kong just Homer Simpson in disguise? More at eleven,"

"Shhh,"

"What, you think they can hear through the partition?"

"I know they can hear through the partition,"

They sat in the back seat of the car, packed in like sardines in a tin: the New Ones. The newbies, the recruits, the fresh meat. Or, at least, two of them were new – one of them had been involved since he was born. In fact, two of them had been fated for this since birth, but the second one had been lucky enough to be spared until puberty.

The first one had been in on this so long that he'd been in the front seat before, once or twice. He'd been on the other side of the partition. He'd sat next to someone not unlike the two who sat in the front now; burly and surly, but wise, with fists and hearts of iron and steel.

During his time in the front, he'd seen exactly what kind of faces the ones who normally sat in the front pulled when the ones in the back messed around. Their lips curled and contorted, their eyes lit ablaze – they looked ready to kill a man.

And, if he didn't get the idiot to his left to shut up, the two up front would probably be killing three guys in particular pretty soon.

"Okay, okay. This is serious," said idiot relented, pressing a button on the device he was holding to end the recording and dropping it into his lap. "But… you know what else is serious? Me. About Diddy Kong and Homer Simpson being one guy. I'm serious,"

"I'm sure you are, Whistle," he sighed.

They had to hide behind codenames on field ops. ITEX's 'all the rules, all the time' attitude was tiring and overbearing at best, but they were all safer this way.

None of them knew who or where their codenames came from – maybe a higher-up, maybe some kind of professional invisibility specialist – but there was always a link between the person and the name. An obscure link, obviously, but a palpable one. New recruits often found themselves infuriated and terrified by this; because how the Hell did they know enough about them already to generate such personal names?

Currently, our story is orbiting a boy who knew exactly what his link was, and knew exactly who had come up with it.

Currently, our story is resting on the shoulders of a boy called Alpha.

"Aren't you supposed to be logging this?" the third, Wilson, chipped in, to the right of the first.

"Ah, right you are," Whistle nodded, resuming his fumbling with the recording device. "See, I _was_ doing something important!" he added, obviously intended for Alpha.

Alpha shook his head, beyond irate. "I'll do it,"

Whistle looked wounded, but coughed up the audio recorder. His face had lit up earlier when one of the girls in the front had thrust the recorder at him – no one who knew him ever really trusted him with anything important – and Alpha had half the mind to give it back, but they both knew this was strictly professional.

"1:46pm in Gallup, New Mexico on Interstate 40. Five designated ITEX parties are inside the designated ITEX vehicle and the target is within range of sight, along with two involved secondary parties. Target appears to be in a neutral state and secondary parties do not pose any immediate threat," he droned, all neatly according to protocol that he'd spent long, meticulous hours pyro-graphing into his head. "Target is presently exiting tagged vehicle and moving towards close-by commercial building. More details to follow. Observation incomplete; will continue."

He passed the recorder back to Whistle and the binoculars back through the partition, almost wishing he didn't have to return the latter. He'd started missing Max before she was gone, and now she was right there. He felt himself rise slightly to make a start for the door.

Ari could do it – he could fling the door open and throw himself over Sam, protocol be damned. He'd make a run for her, and with his enhancements he'd be there in no time. The senior, 'front-seat' Erasers wouldn't be able to blink in the time it would take him, let alone do anything to stop him. She could come with him and the two of them could disappear; he'd never have to face Jeb or deal with the Whitecoats and everyone else again. It was such a brilliant plan. It was perfect.

Except… it wasn't. Max couldn't leave her family behind, not even for him – and why would she? She had no idea about ITEX, about the School or the Institute, about exactly how big a storm she was headed into. What reason would she have to buy into his hare-brained scheme and abandon everything?

Alpha let Ari back in for a moment to heave out a sigh of deep distress and longing, and he could feel Mazin and Sam slipping back in either side of him – but too soon, their masks remoulded and there were no people, no three heartbroken teenagers, in the back of the car. Only Erasers. And Alpha couldn't do it.

.

* * *

~ VII ~ _clandestine _~

* * *

.

The five of them watched Max and her family for around three days. Alpha learned that the senior Erasers' names – or at least their codenames – were Bengal and Candy, and that, despite Candy's cutesy nickname, Bengal was definitely the more approachable one. He doubted he'd ever see them again though, other than in passing, so he focused on producing good reports to impress the girls in the front and get a good word from them with the higher-ups.

He felt… _dirty, _watching them like that. Criminal. He tried to convince himself that it wasn't stalking, but it kind of was. What else can you call purposely following someone for over two thousand miles and documenting their every move? It wasn't like he hadn't done this before, oh no. Alpha had long since given up on feeling guilty about this kind of thing; knowing ITEX, it could be a whole lot worse than non-contact stalking. But… following one of his best friends? Three innocent women – two of them only girls – who never chose to get wrapped up in this?

_Valencia chose. It's her fault._

Well, yes, Valencia had chosen to work for ITEX. But it couldn't be her fault; surely she had no part in what ITEX really did?

Alpha couldn't believe that. He wouldn't. It wasn't Valencia's fault, and that was that.

And following one of his best friends? If she ever found out, he knew she'd never forgive him for this alone, never mind everything else he was about to do. He wouldn't blame her. He'd never forgive himself for this, either, _especially_ not everything else he was about to do.

It was fucked up. Everything was so screwed up, and somewhere down the line, it had messed him up too.

His hopes for redemption and change had died a long time ago. And now, it was finally time for him to set their ghosts free.

.

* * *

~ VII ~ _clandestine_ ~

* * *

.

**AN**: Merry Christmas and have a happy new year! Or, merry 25th of December if you don't celebrate it, haha. Or 26th if you live in Australia/New Zealand/somewhere down there...

\- Leo


	9. VIII: Genesis

**AN: **Wow, so it's been a few months? I guess I can only cross my fingers that some people can still be bothered to read this. Oops.

.

* * *

~ VIII ~ _genesis_ ~

* * *

.

_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r e-i-g-h-t_

_VIII :_

_**g**__ e-n-e-s-i-s_

.

_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**a**__rriving at one goal is the starting point to another"_

_** \- J**__OHN __**D**__EWEY_

.

* * *

~ VIII ~ _genesis_ ~

* * *

.

_MAX_

_9:36PM, Aug 19_

_NYC, NY, USA_

The first thing I noticed as I stepped out of the car was the weather. I was groggy from taking a power nap on the last leg, but you'd still have thought that the most noticeable thing – or things – about the city were the buildings. A dull colour scheme, greys and blacks, graffiti wherever people could reach. Stereotypically creepy, dark alleys with massive, green bin things tucked on the skirts of the streets; too many cars parked on the yellow lines for traffic wardens to bother sticking tickets on. Still, with all the subtle disgrace of casual crime, the buildings stretched into the sky like fallen angels trying to get home.

And yet, the first thing that hit me was the cool breeze, calm blue sky with minimal clouds, mild humidity – nothing like the barrage of heat and bright blue hues of Buckeye. I didn't like the change, but (grudgingly) I supposed I'd have to get used to it. I'd wanted to wake up from this nightmare ever since it started, but now that we'd finally arrived, I had to face the facts. I was decidedly conscious, meaning there would be no waking up in Arizona any time soon.

"Well, this is it, ladies," my mom said, climbing out last. "Spot 21, our designated parking spot while we stay in this apartment building. The room's already paid for for a while, but my colleagues have been prompting me to hurry up finding a place to stay permanently,"

The way she said the word 'prompted' - selected carefully and delivered with a faint grimace - didn't make it seem like her 'colleagues' had been particularly nice about it. I also began to question what kind of company would offer to pay for accommodation for one not-so-significant employee (sorry, mom) and her entire family.

"How will we pay for a new house?" Ella frowned. "We're not exactly loaded, ma,"

"Well, our old house is up for sale now, so we'll have whatever it sells for minus the small percentage that goes to the Realtor. Plus, my new job pays much better than my old one, so that'll help a ton," mom calculated as she opened the trunk. "Maybe you two could even make yourselves useful and get your own jobs," she joked.

Huh. I hadn't thought about getting a job before. I could be a pretty lazy sap when I felt like it, but a job would mean earning money instead of staying in this apartment all day and eating up our savings. I wrote a mental sticky note to be on the lookout for jobs whenever I started exploring the area.

Mom, Ella and I grabbed as much as we could from the trunk and made our way into the apartment building, Magnolia trotting behind me on a lead. Our ocean of boxes would already be in our room, courtesy of the movers. A sign screwed to the wall next to the doors read 'Walker Company: Affordable Animal-Friendly Apartments'.

The reception room was a little like the one at the paint-balling place in Arizona; not too big, but still wide and roomy, with a couple of couches and a wooden front desk. There was a guy in a tux vest behind the counter, which was kinda weird because it wasn't exactly one of those fancy-pants buildings with tiny, fiddly hors-d'oeuvres and a thousand dollar penthouse.

As mom and Ella headed towards the desk while I trailed awkwardly behind, two kids, maybe one or two years younger than me, burst out of the door to the stairs. They were both strikingly blond with eyes the color of the sea on a holiday brochure – siblings, maybe even twins. I couldn't see much detail as they whizzed past, but it seemed like the taller one was holding something and being chased. Probably just playful sibling antics. I briefly wondered if they lived on our floor as the shorter one disappeared through the sliding doors, her golden locks flying up like a halo.

"Hi, Dr. Martinez," mom introduced herself, holding out her hand for the attendant to shake. "We're here to check into room 21,"

"Of course madam, I'll just need a few signatures before I hand over the keys,"

Ella and I went on ahead to our room while mom filled out some paperwork, silent and apprehensive as ever. The elevator ride was awkward, and Ella must've felt the same because she was the first to crack a joke when we reached our locked door.

"So, belly of the beast, huh," she said, gesturing to the door. "Did you bring a baseball bat by any chance? I've heard the Big Apple can be a pretty dodgy place,"

I laughed a little too much, trying to cover up a wince as my temples spiked with pain. _Damn. _I'd felt a dull throb in my forehead getting out of the car, but I was hoping it was just a post-nap symptom. I could only pray that the Brain Smash 3000 didn't start up again; that would be a nasty beginning to our 'fresh start'.

Mom appeared down the hall with her stuff and a clipboard with more forms and probably a customer service sheet or something. Do apartment buildings do that? Is that a thing outside hotels? (Note to self: Google that, if you can ever be arsed.)

She opened the door and went in, me straggling in the back again, bracing myself for the worst. It couldn't be that bad, but I figured it was best to be prepared. Besides, who was I really if I wasn't grumpy on purpose?

I found myself in a cramped entrance hall, with two doors, some hooks on the wall and a shoe rack tucked away to the right. Mom was nowhere to be found and Ella was just heading through the door ahead of us, so I followed suit, my only other option being to hide in the bathroom to my left or cave and hightail it out of here. But Max Martinez is _not _a wuss, no sir-ee.

There was another area of narrow space just outside the entrance hall, with a door directly on each side of me, which opened up into a large lounge area. I peeped through both doors to find that the right was the kitchen and the left was a bedroom. There was only one more door that I hadn't looked into, so that was probably a second bedroom.

I shut the door behind me and let Maggie off the lead. She immediately disappeared into the kitchen, clearly following her nose. Poor sap always did have eyes bigger than her stomach. I shook my head, a smile tugging at my lips, and turned back to the grim task at hand: our humble lodging.

No, not grim. There was no point in whining in my head, even if I wasn't going to stop whining aloud.

_This is it. Suck it up, Max. This is your life now._

.

* * *

~ VIII ~ _genesis_ ~

* * *

.

**AN**: So, first glimpse of the Flock, huh? I might throw one or two more brief sightings in before the girls start school, but there won't be any introductions until then.

\- Leo


	10. IX : Gasoline

**AN: **Chapter 8 took this story over a thousand views, so thanks a million times to anyone reading, and double thanks if you've followed/faved/reviewed.

.

* * *

~ IX ~ _gasoline_ ~

* * *

.

_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r **n**-i-n-e_

_IX :_

_**g**__ a-s-o-l-i-n-e_

.

_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**S**__he had felt a collision with him and known that she had wanted this her whole life: to crash for just one moment into another person at such a velocity as to fuse with him__**.**__"_

_** \- A**__LI __**S**__HAW_

.

* * *

~ IX ~ _gasoline_ ~

* * *

.

_MAX_

_8:12am, Aug 21_

_NYC, NY, USA_

You know what sucks? Okay, yeah, so a lot of things suck. Homework sucks, global warming sucks, Mondays really suck... But at 8 o'clock on a frosty Thursday morning, what sucked most was waking up on the ground with limbs as stiff as my old history teacher's personality.

My muscles contracted in a theatrical stretch as I yawned, bringing relief to my lungs, deprived of oxygen in the stuffy apartment bedroom. I passed Ella, nestled soundly in a bundle of blankets, on my way to crack the windows open.

There were two single beds in the room we were sharing - the one furthest from the door to the hall - but in a burst of anxiety last night, I'd decided to sleep on the floor instead. I don't know why; maybe I was trying to remind myself not to get too comfortable. Whatever it was, if Ella didn't think I was a weirdo before that, she certainly did after it.

Turning around, I started at the sight of Maggie in our room. She'd been sleeping in mom's room since Tuesday night and something about her distinct lack of opposable thumbs told me she hadn't got up and opened our door. Mom wasn't in her room either, but there was a note stuck to the cereal cupboard in the kitchen.

_'Gone to work 8 - 4, if you need me you have my number, breaks 10 - 10.30 and 1 - 1.30. Take care of Mags and have fun! Love, Mom x'_

Ah, yes. August 21st, the first day of the reason we moved indefinitely to the other side of the entire United States. Oh, joy.

I left a bowl of Magnolia's biscuits next to her water before I took my own bowl of cereal out to the lounge.

Ella was just appearing in our bedroom doorway. "Heyyy, wassup, Maximillion?" she drawled, the haze of sleep coming through in her voice.

I grabbed the TV remote and hopped onto the couch. "Mom's gone to work is what."

"Oh hey, yeah, pfft. Her job," she sighed, rubbing at her eyes. "Mmkay, well, should we go and look around later? Take Maggie for a walk?"

"Yeah, we should. We could go pick on some sophomores and get a bad rep going before we start school." _Not like we'd find much to do here for a fortnight._

Ella was suddenly wide awake. "Max, _I'm _a sophomore," she said, looking both disapproving and offended.

"Oh, yeah. Oops."

"_Max_."

"Kidding! I was kidding!"

We were ready to hit the road by half past nine (a lot of that could be accredited to Ella, insisting that she needed to straighten her hair 'in case we run into cute boys', even though her hair is already straight and boys are gross).

I stuck a note on mom's door, just in case she got back before we did, and the halls were as oddly empty as they'd been for three days as we navigated our way to the lobby.

Outside, that cool breeze was at it again, curbing the sun's efforts and making me long for Arizona's still heat. But the graffiti that littered building walls made up for the weather; it had this youthful, rebellious undertone that made me feel at home. I'd always liked the idea of kids being in charge. I couldn't trust adults so easily.

"So, where should we head first?" Ella held Maggie's lead with one hand and shielded her eyes from the sun's glare with the other.

"We'll find a park, I think. It'll be good to know where one is, for Mags. And we could look around some shops after, see what's here?"

"Wow, uh, you wanna go shopping?" Ella scoffed, grinning at me in disbelief. "Am I finally going to have a sister now, instead of the sack of potatoes I've been putting up with?"

"Hey, excuse you," I protested, punching her playfully on the arm as we ambled along. "I can be female and a potato at the same time, thank you very much. But I'm still not going shopping with you."

"Ah, poo. What was that about then?" she frowned and tugged Mags gently away from some other dog's butt.

"I was ... kind of hoping to find a job, actually," I said hesitantly.

"Woah! Could you warn me when you're about to drop a double-whammy like that? First, you show shocking signs of _femininity, _then you wanna work? Voluntarily?"

Okay, so let me pause this here. I just wanted to give this chapter some context, which I have - chilly Thursday morning, beginning our urban adventure, blah, blah, blah. Also, the sibling banter is important because you, whoever you are, are going to need to care about Ella. She turns out to be very important. You'll see.

There was a lot of mucking about after that. We did find a park, and an arcade, an ice rink, a few dozen shoe stores I was dragged around (cough cough)... Nothing I'll bore you with the details of, though. But every chapter of a story needs to have a point, so let's get to it.

I got a job.

Well, I didn't get the job on the same day I applied for it. We found a two-storey warehouse place called Nevermore where the managers were cool with interviewing me on the same day, and told me they'd get in touch as soon as they could.

I told mom at dinner that I had a good chance, even without a CV, and she was pretty thrilled for me. It wasn't like it was a 'first step towards a career' job, especially since I still had no idea what to do with my life, but I guess she was excited to see one of her kids taking another 'growing up' step. Blegh.

But that's still not the point of the chapter.

Actually, the point is something that will probably be a lot more exciting to read than 'I got a job', which is about as exciting as soggy cardboard, so bear with me.

My first day of work was exactly a week later, on Thursday 28th. I was apprehensive enough without seeing some of that Gotham Ravens graffiti on my way there, but that really was the icing on the anxiety cake.

Being somewhat big, the store had three managers, so when I spotted my favorite, I naturally made a beeline for her. Toni wasn't the nicest, but neither was I, so we'd easily warmed up to each other over email.

"Hi, I'm here," I announced, without much else to say.

"Oh, good," Toni said, clearing up some things behind the checkout. "You're on time, but don't think you only have to do that 'cause it's your first day," she warned as she stepped out, holding a clipboard and a bright red shirt. She extended the latter to me. "This shirt is the only uniform you have to wear, and you'll get a name tag soon. I'll show you the ropes now and we'll see how you get on until half past six,"

I agreed and followed her around the ground floor, paying attention for once as she pointed out sections, rooms and coworkers. They seemed to sell everything but the kitchen sink, from vinyl records to video games. Upstairs there was more of the same, except quieter, plus a lot of storage space.

"...That's Nick," Toni pointed out another coworker, just disappearing into the storage room, who was around my age. Maybe he was at the school I was going to. "Aaand that's about it. Did you get all that?" Toni brought me back to Earth, looking at me expectantly.

"Yup."

"Good. Keep that attitude up and you'll fit right in here. So, you get off work at half six, as discussed. Until then, we didn't have a specific position open, just needed another pair of hands - so you'll be starting off as a sort of errand girl." She handed me a list of jobs that needed doing from her clipboard and left me to my own devices.

Item one on my agenda required my presence in the storage room, so I weaved over to the door, ready (ish) to answer my call of duty.

_Breathe. You're Max freaking Martinez. You can do this._

The sheer darkness in the storage room was a little weird, but I shrugged and assumed it was just empty. I brushed my palm against the wall on both sides of the door, but had no luck finding a light switch, so I decided to just roll with it. I'd always had freakishly good vision anyway, even in the dark.

Task one: locate a shipment of dorky RPGs and get them all downstairs somehow, then be as unobtrusive as possible while stacking then on a display table. _Sounds simple enough._

There was something eerie in the sound of my footsteps as I walked, or rather in the lack of sound besides the squeak of my Converses. My stomach twisted into a knot. Even surrounded by so many enormous storage units, the feeling of isolation was palpable.

_Focus. Get the games, get out._ I brushed my loose hair behind my ears and pressed on; my sneaker squeaks increased as my feet steadied with confidence. The hair on the back of my neck still bristled, but I managed to gather my –

Whatever it was I'd managed to gather was all over the floor in seconds when I heard it.

Hissing. Not hissing like a snake, more like hissing the way a pipe does during a gas leak. I might have turned and gone straight to Toni if the lights had been on, or at least tried to investigate it myself, but in a daze of robbed sight, I used the few feet I could make out ahead of me to push on. I'd mention it when the job was done.

The hissing faded eventually, which eased my heartbeat a little, but it definitely didn't make it easier to turn around when I finally found the shipment. There were four boxes, so that would be at least two trips, even if I stacked them. I almost banged my head against the wall thinking about how I could have saved myself the struggle if I'd kept the door open to help me find a light switch.

_Welp, too late for that now. Nice job, 'Max freaking Martinez'. Roll with it my ass._

I could hear the hissing again, but I blocked it out, joking in my head about how thankful I was for the time I spent practicing my box-carrying techniques when we loaded the first moving van. The hissing stopped abruptly and became a rattling, hollow and metallic, but not before I found the door and I was already the heck outta there.

I went back for the last two boxes with the light on. I would have ignored those weird sounds if they'd still been there, but there was no hissing or rattling to or from the drop-off. It left a little hole in my chest, wondering if I'd imagined it all, worrying at my bottom lip.

An uneventful two hours lay ahead of me then, during which I brushed off my uneasiness and managed to do a good job. It wasn't until I was allowed to sign out for the day that anything else of note happened to me, and to be honest, I was beginning to enjoy it. Considering recent events, abnormality was practically the new norm.

Now, you could say it all started in quite a few places. You may argue that it started at the very beginning, when mom told us we were moving - and you'd be right. None of this would have been possible without that happening. You'd also be right if you said it started with my macro-migraines, or when mom made a friendly jab at us about getting jobs, or when I actually took the initiative to apply for one. That's all true.

But another neutron collision in my nuclear chain reaction of events happened on August 28th. The day I met _him. _

Alright, so I _say _'met', but I'm definitely using that word loosely.

"See you soon, Max," Toni said as I checked out, "and don't forget to wear your shirt next time!"

Street lamps poured pools of light onto an otherwise dim road outside. I began to walk back the way I came, deciding I'd rather walk under starlight than light pollution, but not really committing to the idea. The sidewalk was damp and glistening from a shower earlier, ethereal and shimmering under my frayed Taylors.

And that's when I heard it. I don't know what made me look. No city has a clean record; it's not like crime is out of place in New York - and, God, what was it about me hearing things I shouldn't? But whatever it was, it led my feet one in front of the other until I was at the mouth of an alley, between Nevermore and some bar.

I peered round the corner of Nevermore, tomato red employee shirt in hand, trepidation etched on my face. There was a dumpster in there big enough to hide behind, but it was too far in to get to without being seen, so I stayed put and listened.

"Hey, we don't want no trouble, we jus' wanna know what'chu know,"

"I don't know anything. Please, let me leave. It was just a joke,"

There were four guys tucked away in the shadows, two of them blocking escape routes - lackeys - and a third, standing with something aimed at the fourth guy's throat. A knife, judging by the way he held it, arm lax and wrist up. An interrogation scene.

"Oh, you dunno anythin', huh? Jus' a joke, yeah? Well, I guess we'd better jus' let'cha go then," Al Capone Jr. gestured to the alley opening with his knife, and I shrank back as their victim made a move. Boss Man quickly stepped in front of him, knife back at his throat in seconds, eliciting peals of guttural laughter from his yes-men. "Ha ha! Yeah, nah, you ain't goin' nowhere. See, that was jus' a joke, right, boys?"

"Please, what do you want -"

Big Daddy cut the poor guy off with a mimicking tone. "Uh, uh, please! Don't hurt me! Mommy!" His henchmen were whooping now. The sick bastards were enjoying every minute of it. "We don't want'cher money or nothin', kid. We're not those run-a-the-mill criminals, in it for kicks. We want'cher intel. We wanna know what you got up here,"

Major Testosterone flicked his knife up the guy's face, nicking his right eyebrow. A drop of crimson blood beaded on his eyelashes, dripping onto his cheek and rolling slowly down the contours like a tear. "Look, I don't have what you want," the bleeding guy muttered, voice soft and resigned. Defeated. It became clear that the fragile, frightened little boy from moments ago was little more than a persona. "You want in, right? You want out? You want proof? Take it, then. It's not here, but it's as good as yours already,"

"Aha, there he is, boys," a grim smile contorted Top Dog's features. "It's about time you poked'cher whiskers out, lil' rat. I was beginnin' to think we'd got the wrong one there. Nah, see, you got the nail on the head right there. Proof. We want everyone t'know wha's goin' on down here. The _truth,_ about how dark it's gettin' under these trees in our concrete jungle, you know what I'm sayin'? An' we know _you _got som'n to do with it, so all we wanna ask is ... what tree we gotta climb to get to the bird's nest?"

This guy was talking in gibberish, but their captive seemed to know exactly what he meant. "I don't know. They don't tell anybody anything," he said earnestly.

His aggressor looked like he'd been slapped, taking a step back. "Well, then, how the hell you s'posed to know what you're gettin' into? All these kids, runnin' around, head in the clouds ... they think they're Spider-Man. If he ain't tellin' 'em what it's all for, the hell they all s'posed to know?"

"I don't know, man. I don't know."

Kingpin frowned, stepping forward again, grip tightening on his knife. "You been sayin' that a few times too many. 'I dunno, man, I dunno'. You know somethin', I know you do. It's all over your filthy face, kid,"

Their victim stood motionless, analyzing his options, cheek stained scarlet.

BAM! Out of nowhere, the guy's foot came flying and hooked behind Head Honcho's knee, just as his fist connected with the older man's temple. He went tumbling, smacking his head into the cement as the boy jumped on his chest, using it as a springboard to leap at a third guy deeper in the alley. It was darker and further down there, but I could just make out the boy's knee thrusting into the guy's stomach and his foot swinging up after it, smashing into his crotch.

Suddenly, the boy ducked, as if he knew the fourth guy had run up behind him. The guy with a sore groin was already in mid-swing when his buddy arrived and it was too late; his fist accidentally went in for the kill on Henchman #2 instead of their victim, who had already vanished. Not for long, apparently, because as soon as Lackey 2's skull smashed into the wall, victim-turned-Batman was on top of Goon 1.

He had a forearm wrapped around Yes-Man's neck, one sole on the front of the goon's right knee and another on the back of his left. He pushed opposite ways, spreading the guy's legs apart and sending him toppling. His knees buckled in pain and he crouched for a moment to gather himself, but unfortunately for him, a single moment was all Batboy needed to grab a cracked flowerpot from the dumpster and finish the job.

The three older men lay in shapeless heaps on the ground. They hadn't even known what hit them.

With bated breath, I watched as he began to clean up his mess. I was beyond freezing, but if it hurt I wouldn't have noticed; I was transfixed on the person stacking unconscious bodies remorselessly behind a dumpster. I'd never seen anything like it.

And then he emerged from the shadows, clapping his hands like he was brushing off crumbs. He stretched up, his shirt lifting over his hips and spine cracking - wait, wait. His shirt. Garish red, with white hemlines, a shiny name tag...

Well, crap.

This guy, who had just been completely unafraid in the face of death, surrounded and outnumbered with a blade to his neck, who responded to the situation with a couple casual roundhouse kicks and a freaking _plant pot _... was a Nevermore employee.

I tried to retreat fast, but, forgetting to lift my feet, my shoe dragged on the sidewalk. The scraping sound of gravel on concrete certainly got his attention, not that I was aiming for it - nice going, _again, _'Max freaking Martinez'. Way to live up to the title.

Our eyes made contact and my surroundings melted away. Adrenaline coursed through me like an electric current, sending my body into a frenzy of fight-or-flight response, but my brain was silent. For once in my life, my head was full of static, white noise; not a single sarcastic remark to be groaned at. Pure, blissful quiet. I was ... riveted. Paralyzed.

Hooked.

So, I did what I've always done best. I turned on my heel, I ran and I ran and I didn't look back for a second.

.

* * *

~ IX ~ _gasoline_ ~

* * *

.

**AN: **Brownie points go to whoever can guess who Batboy was first. I think it's a little obvious, but maybe that's because I already know :3c


	11. X: Crack

**AN: **Batboy was actually ... Jeb!

* * *

~ X ~ _crack_ ~

* * *

.

_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r t-e-n_

_X :_

_**c**__-r-a-c-k_

.

_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**e**__ach __of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves."_

_** \- A**__DRIENNE __**C**__LARKSON_

.

* * *

~ X ~ _crack_ ~

* * *

.

_MAX_

_6:07AM, Sept 4_

_NYC, NY, USA_

Now, you probably didn't come here looking for advice, but here's a word to the wise anyway: if it's your first day at a new school, don't make an effort to look nice. Everyone will expect you to keep that standard up for the entire year, and at some point you'll end up sacrificing precious sleep just to put an outfit together.

"Maaaaax, where are my curling tongs?!"

Clearly, Ella had chosen to ignore that golden rule.

She was in the bathroom, but she'd been darting around the apartment for who knows how long, having gotten up at a time God did not intend humans to be awake. In fact, I would have still been asleep if she hadn't set an alarm for hell o'clock without telling me.

"How should I know?" I paused to snap, in the middle of wolfing down a stack of pancakes. If I had to be up so early, I figured I'd at least make myself useful and tame my beastly stomach for a while.

"Mooooom?"

"They'll be in a box if you haven't used them yet," came a call from the kitchen, followed by a groan in the bathroom.

My exasperated half-sister stomped out in seconds, heading straight for the pile we'd shoved behind the couch. There was no point in unpacking everything if we were moving to a new house soon - and, yes, we were actually making progress with that now. Between mom and I both working and Ella insisting on getting some soccer practice in before tryouts, somehow we managed to fit house-hunting into our schedules too.

"A-_ha_," Ella made a noise of triumph as she popped up behind me, cradling a box with an 'E' in marker pen on one of the open flaps. The victory seemed to fizzle out as her gaze slid from the box's contents onto me, curled up like it was a Sunday, pajamas and all. Her milk chocolate eyes narrowed, scrutinizing my attire, my expression, my bird's nest hair, before meeting mine with stony determination. "Max, it's almost half past six."

There was a terse and dangerous quiet in her voice, like a viper readying to strike. I pretended not to notice as I sprawled out further and then dug my fork into a piece of pancake, biting it off at a gratingly slow pace while she burned a hole in my skull. "Eeeeeyup," I drawled, flourishing my fork lazily for dramatic effect.

Pushing Ella's buttons was like shoving a tube of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Coke, shaking it up and chucking it either off a roof or into a small, enclosed space. (And yes, this example _is_ taken from first-hand experience.)

She let out a feral noise somewhere between a growl and a squeal. "Max Martinez, you are _hopeless,_" she huffed, scrunching her features in disapproval as she whipped around and stomped from the room.

Okay, so that wasn't exactly an eruption, but maybe I should be glad. As people, we were very different and it was nice that we could both understand and respect that. I mean that wasn't going to stop me being annoying, but ... yeah, what was I saying?

Ella reappeared about half an hour later, when our typically patient mother was wearing dangerously thin waiting for the john and I'd moved from pancakes onto yogurt. She looked ready for a runway, I noticed with an eye roll. Had she never even _heard_ of setting low expectations?

I won't go over the next hour-ish because, after a muffin, I didn't eat anything else, so nothing really important happened. Skipping the boring, non-food-related stuff, I ended up waiting by the door in the ol' hoody and jeans while Ella uhm'd and ah'd about whether to take her trusty soccer ball.

"Come on, it can't be that important if you're considering _not _taking it,"

"Yes it is! It's important," she sighed, chewing her bottom lip; a habit we shared.

"Then take it,"

"But - ugh, I don't _know. _I don't know if I'll even see the coach today, so what's the point if I can't discuss tryouts?" She began to pace between our bedroom door and the door to the hall. "But what if I do find them?"

I felt a pang, remembering exactly what that knot felt like writhing in your stomach. That was what I thought had brought on my migraines when I got too worked up over moving. I went and touched her arm, stopping her mid-procession. "Look, even if you don't find the coach, maybe you could practice at lunch or after school or something. Plus, carrying it around might help you strike up a friendship with some other soccer-minded people," _Huh. That turned out better than I thought. High-five, me!_

Ella gave me a weak smile, her grip on the ball tightening with conviction. "Yeah ... Yeah," she looked at the ground, deep in thought, and she definitely had an 'I'm considering telling you something' face on, but she didn't say another word as we left the apartment.

Mom had already taken the car to work, so we'd be walking. I knew the way; mom had given us directions and I'd seen its name on a sign - Janssen Manhattan High - while exploring on August 21st, but we hadn't seen the building yet. It takes a lot for me to admit this, so you'd better appreciate it, but I actually had a couple of butterflies rooming with my pancakes. It's a little Disney Channel Original Movie of me to get excited about a new school, I know, but sue me, I was seventeen.

Anyway, it wasn't the school itself that gave me a brief flutter. I did say something last time about homework being sucky, so yeah, school was not my favorite thing. But ... call it intuition, call it foreshadowing, call it whatever; strolling down a gray-washed and bustling street towards the sunrise, I just got this weird sense that I was in for a ride.

And I was. I was in for a ride in more than one sense, actually, but that part's for later. For now, if we're staying chronological, we have the part when I first drank in the place where our adventure _really _begins. This was the place where I'd spend the next year making friends for life, playing pranks with and on said friends, trying not to fail my classes, dismantling an underground- whooaaa there, just spoil the whole story, why don't I? Nudge me before I get carried away next time.

Finally, we stood at the gate, nothing but a field and a parking lot between us and our new crap hole. A path curved to the left and up a gentle slope between the gate and the main door, with a plane of vivid, closely-cropped grass and a gray expanse of parking space behind it. Further along the fence to the right there was an entrance for cars.

There were two huge blocks, connected by a smaller block, probably for reception and liaison. The building kind of looked like the love-child of a library and a swimming pool, pretty old-school with a flat roof and walls of bare red brick, but the modern touches like the glass entrance stood out. Big, gold lettering above it read 'JANSSEN MANHATTAN HIGH SCHOOL'. More buildings peeked out from behind the first one, and just beyond I could see sport courts and a larger field.

Anyway, the place was obviously big. Ideal for me, really; I had a hella internal compass so big campuses weren't a problem, and a large student population meant less petty gossip. Hopefully.

I glanced to my right. Ella was gazing at the nearest building with her mouth open - her expression said 'awe', but that didn't add up. Was she just overwhelmed?

"So ... here we are, belly of the beast," I elbowed her out of her trance, referencing what she said to me during our grand debut. Blankly, she turned to me and blinked, before the memory surfaced on her face, tugging at her lips.

"Have you got a baseball bat? I hear New York can be pretty sketchy," she finished.

Cars were tucked in like packing peanuts in the parking lot and a few straggling teens were milling around, but most had already scurried off to homeroom. Crossing the path, there was a short period of calm as I imagined doing this almost every day for a year. I'd get sick of it real fast, but for now the thought was relaxing; continuity was in short supply lately.

I held the door open for Ella, sweeping my arm like an usher at a movie theater. "Ladies first," I joked.

"So what are you?" she said, stepping through the door first. "I distinctly remember you calling yourself a _female _potato a while ago."

"I didn't say I'm not a girl. I simply implied that I'm not lady-like," I clarified, coming to stand next to her in the hall. On either side of us, there were rows of red chairs forming a waiting room, and ahead of us was a pristine, white reception desk with glossy pine doors to the right and left.

"Neither am I," Ella frowned quietly, waiting for me to take the lead. "I could spit on the floor right now. If I wanted,"

"Do it."

...

...

"I don't want to,"

_Of course, _I snorted as I strode towards the desk. "Hi, I'm Max and this is Ella. It's our first day,"

Fortunately, the receptionist - Miss Hepper - was pretty nice, so I made a mental note that it was okay to let my punctuality slip. Girl/potato's gotta have her beauty sleep.

She told us that she'd arranged for two of the school's 'star students' to show us around and pointed us towards our separate homerooms. Each was the same age as one of us, so we'd be in their classes as well as homeroom; I could only hope mine wasn't too perky because that's definitely what I envisioned when Miss Hepper described their 'soaring grades' and 'glowing attitudes'. :/

Sister dearest's homeroom was closer to the entrance than mine, just a few corridors down, in room A21. We parted with a hand-squeeze, Ella giving me an encouraging smile, even though she was the one jumping in with the bull sharks first. She disappeared through the carmine door and I was alone.

My hands and footsteps reminisced together about my first day at Nevermore, clammy and echoing respectively. I was just as alone in the hallway as I'd been in the storage room, but the surroundings were starkly different; the walls here were painted clean, clinical alabaster, glaring beams of white light overhead, a confined space - I couldn't decide which was worse.

Two flights of stairs separated my room from Ella's and from the ground. A98. I considered loitering around for a few minutes outside, but decided against it; that would give the jitters long enough to chafe. See, Max Martinez the Great and the Terrible - well, she wasn't a sham, she was just the other side of the coin. The head side, if you're curious. So, I said goodbye to tails, grabbed the handle and threw the door open.

Faces turned immediately. "You must be Martinez," said a man behind a desk at the left end of the room. He was a stern but overall nonthreatening little dude, with glasses, a well-pressed suit and a receding hairline. "Class, this is Maxine. She'll be joining us for the year. I believe there are two of you, correct? Yourself and a junior?"

The room was long, but not wide, with quite a few rows of individual desks, all of them five seats long. Opposite me, there wasn't an awful lot of wall space in comparison to windows, but whatever wasn't glass was painted honey beige.

"It's just Max," I said bluntly, letting the door swing shut behind me. I rolled up the gray sleeves of my hoody and stuck my fists in the front pocket.

He looked momentarily puzzled. I even thought I saw a flash of panic, but I brushed it off. My imagination could really run wild sometimes. "Just the one?"

"No, my name. It's just Max," I replied. Another quick tip for all the students out there: be as difficult as possible right off the bat if you don't like being bothered. Here, we have an ample demonstration: I corrected my new teacher, thrust my hands into my pockets and avoided his question. Troublesome teen? Check.

He sighed discreetly, eyebrows knitting in irritation, and then ... relief? "Well, Just Max,when you step into this school you're Just Martinez. I'm Mr. Just Chu. I'm sure a member of the admin staff has informed you about your guide, yes? You can sit near the front here, next to Just Gunther-Hagen," he pointed out an open seat in the third row, and with just a glance at my shoulder buddies, instantly I could tell who was my guide and who wasn't a total nerd. Hint: my guide was the dork.

I let one backpack strap slide off my shoulder as I weaved in between the desks, fist-bumping my new homeroom pal on the way past. Her fuchsia hair was up and out of her pale face and bloodshot eyes, legs wide open with booted feet resting on the desk - so she was definitely a Fetch Walker fan, but star student she was not.

No, to my mild distaste, the prodigy kid was definitely the one on the right. Just Gunther-Hagen was watching me intently as my bag thudded on the floor and I settled myself in, deliberating whether to mimic Fetch Jr.'s position, but putting it on the back-burner. The plan was to stay under the radar because people thought I was boring, not to evade attention because they were intimidated by me.

Noise began to bubble and ripple through the other kids, all accepting my alien presence as normal at their own paces. As phones jingled to life and quiet laughter surfaced, Just Gunther-Hagen took his cue to introduce himself and his any-college-would-be-lucky-to-have-me smile. "Hi, I'm Dylan. I'll be showing you around the school for a week or two, depending on your memory, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. If you have any questions, you can come straight to me," he said with a bright smile and a hand held out.

I didn't remember asking for his life story, but I shook the sap's hand anyway. What the hey, I was stuck with this guy; I might as well play nice for now. "Max,"

"Yeah, so I heard," he said, cracking another blinding smile. He turned his gaze on mine, and I have to admit, I was a little taken aback. I thought blue like that only came in paint cans. His sun-kissed blond hair had the deliberate but subtle muss of someone about to do a photo shoot and his skin looked like it had skipped the snapshots and gone straight to airbrushing. "Just Martinez when you step on campus, though, right?"

Eyeing up his impish grin, I forced a lip-twitch that I hoped would resemble a smile. I didn't know how to answer that since I didn't see myself as 'just' anything, so I kept my pie hole shut.

I tagged along with ol' Haagen-Dazs until lunch. I was planning on slipping off and finding somewhere quiet to sit when we ran into Ella, at which point some guy (who was also too attractive for his own good) called Dylan over. He broke off with an apology and yet another million dollar smile.

I was honestly relieved until Ella started making comments about how hot he was. Yeah, I noticed too, but most guys don't deserve all the gushing and giggling they get. I was especially horrified when she told me she'd like to 'order him à la mode', but that is a memory I am trying to suppress.

She told me all about her tour buddy as we went to grab a bite, and from the sounds of it, I'd gotten off easy with Blue Eyes back there. Her guide, Monique, did sound like the type of girl Ella would hit it off with, but she also sounded exactly like the 'too perky' kind I'd been hoping to avoid.

"You wanna find the quad or something?" I asked once we had our food.

"Uh, actually, I kinda promised Monique I'd sit with her and her friends," Ella said sheepishly. _Great, so I'll be sitting alone anyway. _"Maybe you could come along though? They sound cool,"

"I'm thinking we may have very different definitions of 'cool',"

"Oh, pfft, c'mon," she rolled her eyes, leading me away from the queue. "They'll love you. Well, I haven't met them, except Monique, but they will."

See, that's what I've never liked about optimism. Justified optimism can make you a nicer person, but blind optimism can make you bitter from the disappointment it always winds up in. I befriended the Arizona gang back in elementary and hadn't made a single friend since. Would I say I had a good chance now? Signs point to not in this lifetime, pal.

"Ella?"

We turned in unison at the sound of a squeal, and in a flash of brown, Ella was tackled into a hug. "OMG, I thought I wasn't going to find you, and then I'd have to apologize in fifth period for ditching you which I would never do on purpose but, it'd still be awkward 'cause you'd think I didn't like you or ..." the girl trailed off when she caught my gaze. She had a mocha brown face, framed by a mop of wild, dark curls, and big, brown eyes just as untameable as her hair.

"Monique, this is Max," Ella laughed, stiff-shouldered, but amused under Monique's steel grip on her upper arms.

"Ohhh! Hi, I'm Monique. I'm Ella's new back-seat driver," she grinned, wrinkling her nose as she held out her hand. I shook it in earnest this time; she did come off a little overbearing, but there was something endearing about it. "She's told me all about you, and like, how you're not very social, but that's okay. Between me and the guys, there's always enough chatter filling the space so you don't really have to talk if you don't want to, you can just sit and listen. That's what F- uh, Nick does, and we love him anyway!"

"Uh, thanks," I tried to process what she'd said, but she said it so fast it left me reeling. I got the gist of her monologue (Moniquelogue?) but jeez, could that girl run her mouth or what?

As we made to follow Monique out of the cafeteria, it turns out we'd been too focused on her chatter to notice the buzz that was passing through. Whispers thrummed throughout the room. Students had stood up, some even on chairs, to try to figure out what was going on. I went to leave - if this was how food fights started, I didn't want to stick around for the main event.

"Max, wait," Ella said.

"What? Why?"

"Monique, what's going on?"

"Uh, sudden gossip like this usually means something's happened," she shrugged. "It's never really important, but something that causes all this fuss is usually something the principal's going to have to acknowledge, pointless or not,"

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I want to know what's happening," Ella declared before marching off towards the tables. _She's a little scary when she wants something, _I thought as I watched her push her nerves aside and grill a bunch of strangers.

In an instant, the double doors on the far right swung open, revealing the same guy who yelled Dylan over earlier. It looked like he'd been running.

"You've gotta see this!" he yelled, "spooky Ravens poop, behind the library!"

People began to pour out like water from a jug and I couldn't see Ella. Monique shot me a flustered look. "Do you know where Ella went?"

We scanned the remaining students, most of them either slowly on their way out or totally unfazed, going about their lunch as usual. My sister wasn't among them.

"No. I guess that leaves us one option," I replied, indicating to the door. We'd have to follow the crowd and hope we could find her, or I wouldn't find out if she was okay until the final bell, which was over two hours away.

The doors led out the back of the admissions building into the open. Breeze hit my face instantly, countering the warmth from the mid-sky sun. A stream of people were hurrying towards the opposite end of the quad, in the direction of the library.

"So, 'spooky Ravens crap' ... what does that mean, exactly?" I asked while we jogged to catch up, passing through batting cages, basketball courts and more buildings I hadn't been in yet. Janssen High sure had a big budget.

"Well, a lot of the clowns around here think they're actually funny and - well, you've heard about the whole, uh, 'Gotham Ravens' mess going on, right? That gang?" So, they were just a gang? I nodded yes. "Right, well, those classroom comedian types think it's absolutely hi-_larious _to freak everyone out by drawing insignia and carving creepy messages into the desks and stuff, like, 'the Ravens are watching'. Stuff like that. It's kinda mean,"

"Making people feel paranoid on purpose is definitely not cool," I agreed.

"Oh yeah, there's that; it's super rude to creep people out on purpose. But I meant, like, what if the Ravens people are trying to do something ... important? No one's really sure what they are, so maybe they're not just a disorganized bunch of thugs like some people think, right? You know, like, I'm just saying. They could be the good guys,"

We were jogging at the back of the swarm now; we couldn't have been far off the library. "So, you mean it's not fair that people are trying to make them look bad, when they don't know what they're really like?"

"Yeah, totally," she nodded, curls bouncing. "Like, they could just be another gang of 20-year-old dudes trying to look tough and manly, but maybe not, you know? They might be, like, Batman's disciples or something, trying to clean up Gotham's streets and mop the floor with crime's butt. I just don't wanna call it out too early,"

Despite not having been in the library yet, I picked it out as the building attached to the far end of the math and sciences block. Something about the giant metal letters over the doors reading 'LIBRARY' may have given me a hint.

The area in front of the block was empty; the people who were sitting out here must have been a few of the first to see whatever it was that started the chaos. A handful of students were trickling around the side of the library, joining the mass of onlookers behind it. Fresh paint fumes hit me as we closed in, and when we rounded the last corner and shouldered our way into the crowd, I saw why.

The back of the library had a smooth, burnt orange coat of paint, like the color of a regular brick, and only had windows on the first and highest floors. Apparently, somebody had decided that the space between the two rows of windows was the perfect canvas for a large-scale art project.

I'm hoping you've put two and two together by now - i.e. 'spooky Ravens crap', Monique mentioning their insignia, the stench of fresh paint ... ya got it now? Yup. Sure as day, once we were far back enough to see the _bigger picture, _there was indeed a jumbo Ravens symbol sprayed in black paint across the wall.

Nice. That's real subtle, guys.

In case you can't remember what their ingenious logo (did someone say sarcasm?) looks like, it's a finger held to a pair of lips, framed by a pair of wings and a tail, presumably raven. Oh, and it looks super freaking eerie when it's bleeding black goop.

Just then, a speaker attached to a nearby lamp post decided to chip in. "Ella Martinez to the principal's office, please. That's Ella Martinez to the principal's office."

Well, crud.

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~ X ~ _crack_ ~

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**AN: **I was just kidding about Jeb being Batboy (he's not). It's kinda funny to think that some people might read the first AN and not read this one though.


	12. XI: Cobblestones

**AN****: **I just remembered that my first draft for this story was a short prologue where Max was talking to a homeless woman. I don't know if I still have it, since I wrote it mid last year, but it's interesting to think how much this has developed since then.

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~ XI ~ _cobblestones_ ~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r e-l-e-v-e-n_

_XI :_

_**c**__-o-b-b-l-e-s-t-o-n-e-s_

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_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**t**__here's so much happenstance, so many accidents - stumbling into something and finding it interesting and living with it over time and building on it. it's okay to work from doubt. you need to be willing to not know."_

_** \- E**__LLEN__** G**__ALLAGHER_

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XI ~ _cobblestones_ ~

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_MAX_

_12:44PM, Sept 4_

_NYC, NY, USA_

"Ella Martinez to the principal's office, please. That's Ella Martinez to the principal's office,"

Well, crud.

What could the principal possibly want with my sister? There was no way they were questioning her about the '_installation_' behind the library; she was an angel, and besides, she'd been with Monique and I since lunch started. Hadn't she?

"Hey Monique, Ella was with you before me, right?" I asked, my gaze glued to the graffiti.

"Uh, no," she said, her tone uncertain. She cast a flighty glance my way. "I found you two in the cafeteria, remember? Wasn't she with you all lunch?" She seemed to take my silence as a no. With a sigh, I peeled my eyes away from the smirking bird lady on the wall.

Next stop: principal's office.

The principal's office was front and center in the admissions building, overlooking the gates from the top floor. We ate on the way, Monique flexing her gold medal in bad jokes and pointless facts ("Did you know that a 'butt' was once a medieval unit for measuring wine? Like, 'I'll take two butts, sir',") to lighten the mood.

I couldn't hear anything through the door, so we sat and waited outside, trying to figure out what they wanted with Ella. "Maybe she's not in trouble. Maybe she did something good and he wanted to... congratulate her?" Monique suggested, but even she sounded skeptical.

"Nah. Ella's a good kid, but we've only been here a few hours. What could she have done already to deserve a handshake from the principal himself?"

"Not much. Mr. Pruitt isn't the type to hand out awards," she filled me in, "he's old and mad crusty, and he seems okay at first, but trust me, he gets worse. I heard that one time, he was giving some girl a grilling and she made a break for it, so he chased her down the hall. I believe that one 'cause I was in the floor below and I heard him yelling. Red in the face, they said. Apparently, he keeps a Taser in his desk, too,"

"Gee, thanks, Monique, it gives me a real boost of confidence knowing my sister's in such good hands right now," I scoffed. She gave me an apologetic smile, knowing I was only joking. Well, half-joking.

"You two don't look an awful lot alike, for sisters," she pointed out as she shuffled to sit next to me against the wall. "I mean, you have similar facial features, but it kind of ends there. Your hair's lighter, her skin's darker. You're tall and lean, she's short and rounded. She's soft and squishy, like a dumpling - whereas you look like you could kill a man with just your elbows if he looked at you funny. No offense,"

"No offense taken," I said tightly. I actually rather approved of the elbows comment, but thinking about why Ella and I only shared one set of chromosomes always made my hands shake. "We have the same mom, but not the same dad. Biologically, I mean. Not that either of them stuck around long,"

To my surprise, Monique said, "Oh, man, don't I know it," as she stretched her legs out and sighed. "I don't think any of my friends have both parents around. Gaz and Angel live with their mom, Iggy... wait, yeah, he has both. Nick? Uh - I don't know who he lives with, actually. And in my house, it's just me and my ma and a bunch of plants and bugs,"

"Damn," I said. There wasn't really much to add. My friends in Arizona were all from split families too, so either that was really common these days or I was accidentally putting some ancient voodoo curse on everyone I knew. Maybe keeping that box of random trinkets hadn't been such a good idea; did I have some shifty Egyptian amulet in there?

We sat and talked until the bell rang, new respect between us now that the personal junk was out in the open. When it was time for fifth period, Monique insisted she should wait for Ella so they could walk to class together. I shooed her away, saying they'd be running together instead if Ella took any longer.

In the end, she did take any longer. I was going to be in a great stinking heap of scheisse for being so late to fifth.

My mild pissed-off-ness melted away when she stepped out, shaking and sniffing once the door was closed. "Ugh, that was terrible," she breathed heavily.

"What? What did he say? What did he do?" I demanded through the lump in my throat.

She sat in the spot I'd been in seconds ago. "It started off okay," - like Monique said - "he just asked me how I was getting on, but I knew that wasn't all. He would have called for both of us, and not over the intercom where everyone would hear. Then, he said he'd had a 'tip off' that I was talking to a boy I shouldn't earlier,"

"Were you?"

Mentally, I smacked myself. I'd been thinking about protecting Ella from two-faced boys when the real hostile was behind the door next to me.

"I don't know! I don't think so. I've met a lot of boys today; I don't even know which one he meant. He said he didn't want me 'mixing with the wrong crowd'. I'm alright, Max, really. It just shook me up how aggressive about it he was. Like, I don't need some grotty old man telling me who to make friends with. It was just weird," she muttered, standing up.

"Fine. But in the future, if that brick-head steps a toe out of line, you tell me, and I'll cut it off," I promised as we began to walk to the stairs.

"Cut what off?"

"The toe out of line,"

"Ah, noted. Did you really wait outside this long for me? And where did you and Monique go when that guy came in screaming about 'scary Raven poop'?" She put on a mocking masculine voice as she quoted the kid from earlier.

"I know right? Since when do high schoolers say 'poop'?" I rolled my eyes, nearing the first floor. Apparently Ella wasn't in this building for fifth either. "We were waiting for you to come back and then he came in and you disappeared, so we followed to see what he was talking about. We figured that's where you'd be, but we heard the intercom thingy and you were already in there when we got here,"

"What, so Monique came with you?"

"Yeah, but the bell went and I told her to go. You know where you're going, right?"

"Yeah, I remember," Ella said, squinting in the sunlight. "I'll wait for you after sixth by reception, alright?"

I waved as we parted ways. Wind whipped strands of my hair whichever way it felt like. Turning around and ditching sounded like a mighty fine idea, but as much as I despised math, I was going to need quadratic and simultaneous equations when exam season rolled around. And then probably never again.

Math, as far as that goes, was okay. I got about 50% of the stuff my teacher said - 30% was spent staring at birds through the window and the other 30% of the lesson was in Mandarin Chinese. Since when did math have letters that aren't part of the question?

Dull, right? Well, not exactly. When the time I spent watching birds and blocked by a language barrier began, I noticed something. Yeah, whoa, I actually paid attention to something in math class. Hold your horses, though, because it wasn't math.

You remember that guy Nick from Nevermore? In total honesty, I wasn't sure at first and even by the end of the lesson I wasn't totally on board with the idea. I was hoping the teacher (Mr. Poppa? Papa?) would call on him by name, but he didn't, so all I had to go on was his appearance. And, from glimpses of Nick in Nevermore and potentially in the alley, this boy in my class looked an awful lot like him.

Here's the thing that tied it together, though: there was a little scar (a 'nick', _snort_)on his right eyebrow that roused my memory of the Alley Incident. Up until the moment we dispersed for sixth, it was just a vague theory, but taking the way others reacted to him into account - some with mistrust or distaste, some with respect and even admiration - it all fit neatly.

Rumors probably flew like fireworks about this guy; he must have had a reputation or some kind of presence in school. Maybe he was an athlete - kick-boxing or martial arts would make the most sense, if you ignored his haphazard fighting style.

I chewed on that as I wrestled throngs of startled freshmen on my way to biology. Unable to decide whether to confront him or keep my distance, I filed that choice away for whenever I next saw him.

Biology was just as mundane as math, save for the double chocolate doppelganger surprise. I walked in, minding my own business and WHAM, there she was. There _I _was, but twice. Another me, like a mirror image, was sitting on the far end of the front row. Besides her darker hair, pixie cut and a slew of scratches and scars, she could have been a reflection in glass or water.

I think I stared at her so long, so indignantly, I could have given Natalia Kills a run for her money. _Ladies and gentlemen, we have a doppelganger in our midst... _(Please read that in an affronted Yorkshire accent for the full comedic effect.)

Near the back but close to the door, I found a seat, fished my notebook out and slung my bag under the desk. Some kid came around dropping textbooks on desks and then our teacher went through class rules, introduced the syllabus, blah, blah. Bored out of my mind, I began to notice how cold it was in there and how the clean white lines of the room unsettled me.

Hospitals were always an icky experience. In the one I went to when Sam dared me to do something ridiculous, they tried to make it friendly by sticking kid patients' 'get well soon' hand turkeys on the walls and leaving bowls of candy in the waiting room. They failed, of course, because there's not much you can do about the creepy undercurrent of a place where half-conscious people's living bodies are opened up and poked around in with sterilized forks.

If you live in Australia or Singapore or somewhere else really far-off, don't worry about missing out 'cause I'm sure even you could hear my cry of 'hallelujah' when the bell went. I don't know how much longer I could have gone before taking drastic action.

I took the back way out of the science block, slipping through a door in an empty classroom. Not a soul was in sight, but they'd taped off the far left end of the building between the wall and the fence; _the scene of the crime_.

Ooh. Dramatic.

Half-sister be damned, I wanted a pizza the action. (Piece of the action, geddit?) My feet led me closer, fingertips grazing the bricks, ducking under classroom windows when they posed a threat. I squatted and swung under the bright yellow tape. As much as I wanted to touch the paint residue at head height on the wall, to test its texture, something told me '_don't get your fingerprints on that'_. This wasn't some silly prank. This wasn't some freshman's crude, anatomical diagram etched into a desk, or 'i like boobies' scribbled in a Spanish textbook.

I mean, first of all, the thing was at least one and a half Maxes off the ground, so either the culprit was nine feet tall or they used a ladder. And I'm pretty sure someone would've noticed an Avatar wandering round.

That begs the question of how they got away with bringing a ladder to school, or stealing one from a janitor's closet, then disappearing behind the library with it - not to mention the noise paint cans make when you shake and spray them (which is a rattle and a hiss, by the way), and the smell must have been wafting long before they finished...

Hey, hey, hey. Uh, did 'a rattle and a hiss' just ring a bell for anyone else? Yes, no?

Duuuuude.

Okay, so this might just be one freaky coincidence, but do you remember that weird-as-heck half-hour I spent in the Nevermore storage room? I couldn't find the light, so I went to find a shipment in the dark, and I got spooked by some noises that shouldn't have been there. Hissing, rattling, more hissing.

And you know what else I just remembered about that room?

I forgot at the time. I thought I was alone in there, which is why I got my panties in such a pinch - I thought there was a freaking gas leak, for Pete's sake.

Nick was in there.

I guess I forgot because Toni had just pointed him out to me, seconds before he vanished, so he was kind of insignificant at the time. But, as I sat crisscross apple sauce, craning my neck to look at the graffiti, I realized it was all adding up. The dots were connecting themselves as if this guy had been getting sloppy, or leaving clues.

Nick was in the storage room, where he may or may not have been testing out some spray paint cans. He was in the alley, where I watched in horror and awe as he kicked the gonads off three thugs. He was in my math class, sitting against the wall opposite the windows, with his head down and a killer grip on his poor, innocent pencil. ('_Please! I have a pencil wife and pencil children...')_

In the alley by Nevermore, I'll bet those guys were shaking him up for whatever he knew about the Gotham Ravens. So it was him. It had to be.

I was off my ass and darting for the admissions building before you could say 'dumbfounded'. No, of course I wasn't going to tell Ella - I didn't know what I was going to do.

Nothing, probably. I didn't really want to think about it, so I'd do nothing until something or someone gave me another shove and forced me to.

Trying to steady my breaths, I slowed to a trot when I was inside. Ella would ask where I'd been, but I didn't want her to know I ran back, or she'd ask what got my britches in a bunch, too.

Or at least, I thought that was what she'd say, if she were there. But Ella never showed up. I kicked back on one of those red waiting room chairs in front of reception for almost twenty minutes before I gave up. The brat knew her way home.

Twenty past three in our nook of Manhattan saw a calmer wind and less clouds than earlier. I slipped my earphones in as I followed the path off school premises.

My phone buzzed against my leg.

**Ella**, 03:09 - forgot to tell you i'm going to monique's after school don't bother waiting i'll be home in a few hrs or smth xxx

So much for 'don't bother waiting'.

Now, my memory is one thing I pride myself on. Pretty much anything unrelated to school gets soaked up and filed away in the Maximum Archives of Max Martinez. The way from my school to my apartment, though I'd only walked it once, is not something I would have forgotten - so how I ended up wherever I was, I don't know. The music must have distracted me, maybe the text. Yeah, I definitely spent too long grumbling about bad signal and my bozo sister.

_I can't have wandered that far from school_, I thought. _I can just retrace my steps_. Except I couldn't retrace my steps because my brain had been half-asleep when I took them.

I'd said it so many times lately, I could hardly bear the '_nice one, Max freaking Martinez'_ when it popped into my head.

As I turned on my heel to get out of this block, a couple of guys crouching by a parked car caught my eye. Scratching the emblem off the hood. I was glad they weren't doing something worse, like trying to steal the car itself because that could mean they'd done something even _worse_ and were looking for a getaway ride.

Still, their dicey deeds alerted me to the fact that I was on a That street. Y'know, the kinda place your parents tell you to avoid 'cause the cops don't care who gets mugged there. After all, why come here at all when there's rich people to worry about?

One of the guys looked up at me as I passed by, his eyes alight with an unspoken dare. _Stop us, then. Call the cops. Try to take us on yourself, if you're woman enough._

I shrugged.

He turned away.

I carried on until I got to a junction, feeling like that girl from _Labyrinth_ with David Bowie. 'One way leads to the Goblin Castle at the center of the labyrinth, and one leads to... certain death!'

(I feel like I've made a Labyrinth reference before. Have I ever mentioned a talking, blue worm with a scarf?)

Well, I couldn't get much more lost either way, so I let my gut lead me to the right. I could always call my mom when she got out of work; it didn't matter that she got off work at four because asking for help was a last resort anyway. If you know of something I can't do once I've set my sights on it, you can have free front row tickets for all your family and friends to watch me eat my own shorts.

If my gut had told me to go to the left, I would have found my school in no time. As predicted, I hadn't gone far, so a few blocks down I would have found myself at the gates of JM High and made my way 'home' from there.

But here's the thing. My instincts are never wrong, and that's not cockiness talking, that's math and history. Statistics based on experience. My head and my heart huddled together and decided that I should go right, which leads me to believe that I was meant to go right, even if it made me late for work.

And I'm not talking about some airy-fairy 'destiny' crap. Let me make it clear that I don't believe in fate. I don't believe my future is written in the stars because that would be throwing my life into the wind. That would be like signing myself away, letting some divine decree, wheel of fortune BS control me.

I just mean that if I trusted my decision then, I trust it now.

Surfing through an oncoming tide of people, I was reminded of Buckeye in the way that I couldn't look down when I walked. I used to watch my feet, watch my shoes spray gravel and crunch leaves, glance over my shoulder and watch my footsteps form in the dirt.

City living was a new can of worms; you can only watch your shoe's toe scuff if you want to be flattened into the sidewalk. While my old sun-beaten suburbia let me do what I wanted, the city demanded I kept my chin up and my eyes forward.

Caught in the wave of walkers, I crossed a road and dipped out of the crowd, escaping into the mouth of an alley. I decided to text Ella while I was there - even with a description, she wouldn't have known where I was, either, so it wasn't for help. Just for the hoots.

**Max**, 03:30 - didnt get ur text, waited anyway. hows moniques place?

Thankfully, Ella was a prompt texter.

**Ella**, 03:30 - oops sorry! it's fun here, there's more of her friends over rn. her mom's nice  
**Ella**, 03:30 - stop txting me tho you need to go to work soon

**Max**, 03:31 - id go to work if i knew where i was woops lol

**Ella**, 03:31 - max!  
**Ella**, 03:32 - maybe monique can help? where does it look like she might know where you are

Reading 'max!' in Ella's voice cracked me up. I could almost feel her thumping me on the arm, giving me that disapproving look that means she cares about me.

I was so distracted, I didn't even hear the footsteps approaching behind me.

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* * *

~ XI ~ _cobblestones_ ~

* * *

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**AN: **This story is set in 2014 and the 'Natalia Kills Her Career' incident happened in 2015, but I left that reference there because that really cracks me up. Someone needs to tell her that Willy Moon didn't actually invent suits.


	13. XII: Quicksand

**AN: ****So I did th****e**** thing where I disappear for a couple of months... oops. I lost ****motivation**** over the summer, which sucks because I ****started Sixth Form a few weeks ago (ew), meaning studying takes priority over writing now.**

**Important character intros ****and big reveals ****in this one. And 6k words make it the longest yet! ****I hope ****the length and plot development make up for the wait.**

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* * *

~ XII ~ _quicksand_ ~

* * *

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_**c**__-h-a-p-t-e-r t-w-e-l-v-e_

_XII__ :_

_**q**__-u-i-c-k-s-a-n-d_

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_**c**__hapter quote:_

"_**i**__'m afraid pf getting lost; no, i'm afraid of sinking into the city as in a quicksand, afraid of getting sucked into something i can never escape__."_

_** \- **__**D**__E__BORAH_ _**F**__E__LDMAN_

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* * *

~ XII ~ _quicksand_ ~

* * *

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_MAX_

_3:30PM, Sept 4_

_NYC, NY, USA_

Lost and caught in the wave of walkers, I crossed a road and dipped out of the crowd into the mouth of an alley. I decided to text Ella while I was there—not for help, just for the hoots. Even with a description, she wouldn't have known where I was, either.

**Max**, 03:30 - didnt get ur text, waited anyway. hows moniques place?

Thankfully, Ella was a prompt texter.

**Ella**, 03:30 - oops sorry! it's fun here, there's more of her friends over rn. her mom's nice  
**Ella**, 03:30 - stop texting me tho you need to go to work soon

**Max**, 03:31 - id go to work if i knew where i was woops lol

**Ella**, 03:31 - max!  
**Ella**, 03:32 - maybe monique can help? where does it look like she might know where you are

I should have heard the lazy footsteps behind me—I would have, if I weren't too busy laughing at 'max!'. I could almost feel Ella thumping me on the arm, giving me that disapproving look that means she cares about me.

"Nice chat with mommy?"

On instinct, my grip tightened on my phone as I whipped around. I locked it without looking; Ella would understand. Or not.

_You can't tell her you got ambushed in an alley, bonehead, especially not if you're dead._

"Texting your boyfriend? Or sexting your boyfriend, maybe?" Marinated in mirth, his voice lacked genuine malice, so he probably wasn't here for a spot of murder before lunch—unless he was like one of those TV show serial killers who do it for sick kicks.

_Oh, you did _not _just say that. _I prickled in disgust. Maybe I would tell Ella about this knuckle-kisser, if he turned out not to be armed and hungry for Martinez blood.

"Yeah, one of them. I have twelve. Football champs, the lot... y'know, the beefy types," I said as I conjured up the most fake smile in the history of fake smiles, ever. "Boyfriend Number Five just swore to maul any guy who ever approached me in an alley," I added, waving my phone obnoxiously.

"Dang, that's a shame," the guy came closer. He had a pair of headphones hanging round his neck, but the flattened strip in his hair told me he wore them a lot. The hair itself was mostly flat anyway, and dark like his eyes, his skin, his smile, his clothes... pretty much everything he wore, from the hoody to the baggy pants to the aviators, was a dark shade of something. It might have been an intimidating ensemble, if it didn't look so try-hard on him. "I was hoping to be 'number thirteen, Ratchet', but now I've approached you in an alley..."

"Wait, did you just call yourself ratchet?" I snorted.

"Don't wear it out," he smirked.

"That's your name? Oh, jeez, uh," I laughed. "You know that ratchet is slang for, like, ugly, right? Sorry to burst your bubble, little man,"

He frowned at me for a moment, then his face exploded with a smile he mugged the Cheshire Cat for. "You're alright. And I was shitting you with the boyfriend thing," he said, holding his hand out. His gaze turned thoughtful. "You look a lot like my friend, Maya, actually. Like, you look freaky like her. You could be twins,"

I eyed up his hand, making sure he could see the mistrust on my face. I had no clue where that hand had been. "I'd shake that, pal, but you did just approach me in an alley. From behind,"

"Oh, yeah, sorry," he said, retracting it and shoving it in his pocket, not a hint of awkwardness in his expression. "I approach a lot of people in alleys, so I'm used to people being okay with it. All my friends are the alley-dwelling type, so," he shrugged.

I let my shoulder-blades fall against the wall. I knew I should have left—the guy could be dangerous and I needed to get to work. But a part of me didn't want to go and unfortunately, that part was the strong-willed and stubborn bit that always got its way. I call it, 'Max'. The Max part is separate from the rationality and common sense parts of my brain.

"I think I've gone in more alleys since I've been here than the number of alleys I'd even seen from a distance in the past seventeen years,"

"Since you got here?" Realization seeped into his voice. "You visiting, or did you move here?"

How much was I willing to tell this guy? "The population of Manhattan just went up by one," Apparently, that much.

"So you're..."

"Lost now? Yup," For some reason, when I let that slip, I didn't feel like I was admitting anything of consequence. _Hello, Earth to Max? Ever heard of kidnapping?_

"Oh, shit," he said. The billboard smile was back. "Right, dang, I was trying to figure out if you were here to sign up. You got any folks round here that are gonna miss you? This could take a while, so I don't want anyone worrying about you,"

My back said bye-bye to the wall. Ready for an up-and-away if necessary, I said, "I'm sorry, 'sign up'?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said excitedly. He thumbed over his shoulder like he was going to take me that way. _As if_. "You came to join the Ravens, right? Spread those wings, 'cause I'm about to show you where we nest,"

Something, deep down, told me to say 'yes'. This idiot was about to spill all the Ravens' secrets, and I didn't even mean to end up in this alley. I'd be the perfect spy.

However, since Something, Deep Down had also told me to take a left and gotten me lost in the first place, my ears were open to rationality this time.

Missing work to play detective? Rational, I don't think. Accidentally joining a nationally notorious gang that's apparently full of floating, graffiti-ing high-schoolers and this headphone-haired ignoramus? Computer says 'Hell no'.

I took a step backward. "No, you're not." Five points to Gryffindor for not ending up in this nut-job's freaky cult camp!

Had he not been handing out application forms for the youth crime lifestyle, I _might _have been able to swallow my pride, for just a few seconds, to ask him for directions. Shocker, I know. But, no, this guy just had to be a teenage mobster wannabe. Well, eff him. I'd find it myself.

His expression read black-and-white betrayal as I backed out of the alley.

It was easy enough to get back to school once I'd at least partially accepted that maybe I'd possibly not been not the opposite of right for once. I traced back the way I came and arrived at the Walker building by the time my watch read 03:43; that was just enough time, if I took the elevator and ran.

And I was fully banking on having to sprint... until I was rudely intercepted, yet _again_. This time, I'd just yanked my red polo over my head and I was on my way out when two small, blond nuisances popped up like plastic animals in a Whac-A-Mole machine. My luck in a nutshell, folks.

"Hi, you're Ella, right?" the boy grinned, sporting a gap in his teeth; he must have knocked it out somehow because he looked way too old to still be losing baby teeth.

"Iggy told us about you," said the girl next to him. She gave me the longest, unsmiling elevator look in history... Sizing me up? "I'm sorry Mr. Pruitt shouted at you like that. He has no right to tell you to avoid Iggy,"

They were the same two I'd seen running through the lobby when I first got here. A few times since, I'd seen them do it again, giggling and screaming and tearing up the corridors. I figured they must have had Zack- and Cody-esque status in this place.

"If you want, I can let a couple rip in his office tomorrow,"

"_Gazzy,"_

"Uh, sorry, I'm not actually Ella. I'm her sister, Max," I clarified, "and I don't mean to be rude, but I'm already late for something,"

"I can see that," Gazzy said, "you're wearing a Nevermore shirt. Our friend works there,"

"Nick," his sister added.

I decided this was the perfect time to choke on my own spit.

The two stared at me as I coughed up my guts, not sure if I was actually dying or not, until I managed to stop convulsing and shove my hands awkwardly in my pockets.

"Uh, yeah, I've seen him around. Anyway, I really have to go," I muttered, swerving past them. As an afterthought, I said over my shoulder, "it was nice meeting you,"

So... that was a thing.

With my processing power stretched between getting to work and not getting run over, I was having a hard time taking these new revelations on board, even being the calm and collected young adult we all know and love. (Snort.) As I bulldozed through the day crowds, I began to make the connection between Gazzy's Friend Nick from Nevermore and Nick Who Monique Mentioned Outside Mr. Pritt-Stick's Office Earlier.

On top of that, I distinctly remembered Monique mentioning a 'Gaz' and an 'Iggy' on her friends list, who were both apparently more relevant than I knew. And, speaking of Ella's mystery man, I'd have to keep an eye on that guy. Those kids might have defended him, but if they were pals with ol' (un)Saint(ly) Nick, I could definitely let myself question their judgement.

So, uh, I guess I may have been sliiightly more connected to this guy than I'd anticipated. Splendid. Now all I needed to round off my bucket list was to have someone sock me in the gut and make off with my wallet—bonus points if the police say 'we'll consider your complaint' in a voice that says 'ha ha, not really'.

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* * *

~ XII ~ _quicksand_~

* * *

.

Toni didn't grill me when I got in. She watched me like a hawk as I trailed over to her at the main checkout, then stood and waited for—well, for what, I don't know. I didn't think she'd take a shine to any attempt at explanation, or even accept an apology if I promised to never be late again.

Blood flooded to my cheeks and neck, burning my skin from the inside; only adding to the maddening feeling of being scolded like a child.

"Well? Are you sorry you're late?" she pressed, strands of her tawny-brown bob cut falling over her face. She didn't go to move them.

"Yes,"

"Are you sorry you're late because you're late, or because I'm staring you down and making you uncomfortable?"

For once, I paused to think before opening my yap. "Both,"

She examined me some more, leaning over the counter on her palms: the bad cop interrogation stance. Then she swung back, satisfied. "Thank you. I expect you won't do it again, because if you do, I'm going to give a store-wide PSA about it so all the customers and staff can come and help me stare at you," I couldn't tell if she was joking. "Right, well then, I have a job lined up for you. We have a bunch of stuff we got shipped in ages ago but at the time, we didn't have the work force to catalog it _and_ sell what we already had, so I've got Brigid and Nick upstairs alphabetizing, pricing, logging, _et cetera_,"

"And you want me to go help? Sounds simple enough,"

"I don't care if it sounds simple, complicated, impossible—you're gonna do it anyway," she said, tipping her head towards the stairs. "Get going, then. Brigid'll probably explain it all to you; Nick doesn't talk much,"

"Yup, so I heard," I mumbled as I walked off.

Maybe if I pretended I had no idea about him, I'd bluff my own brain into thinking he didn't make my blood run cold and hot at the same time. I wouldn't talk to him and he wouldn't talk to me; the most senior title I'd ever earn from him was 'that blonde chick from work'.

Now, I know what you're thinking and yes, I do sign autographs. Honestly, the only secret to my stellar people-avoiding tactics is hard work and dedication. And a dash of misanthropy.

Upstairs, Brigid waved me over—she was a young woman with beach blonde hair, who somehow managed to look graceful in a shapeless Mario-red polo and mom jeans. The door to the storage room was propped open and the lights were on.

"You must be Max, huh? I'm Brigid; Toni said you'd be helping. Nick's bringing out the boxes from the back and I've been pricing them, so we just need someone to index them on the system," she explained, like Toni said she would.

"I'm someone," I shrugged.

When Brigid laughed, she sounded like wind chimes and velvet, or something equally lavish and ridiculous on a bottle of lady shampoo.

Welcome to Barfville, population: me.

"That's the spirit! Now, let me show you how this thing works,"

She showed me how to use the bar code beepy thing and what to type in to register the item on the system, making pleasant small talk all the while.

Product name: Brigid. Product description: Bland, perky to the extreme—annoyingly so—and way too freaking Hufflepuff for her own good. Average product rating: 2/10.

She talked about how she was hoping to become a doctor of marine biology; she'd applied to a bunch of uppity science colleges and even secured an internship on a research vessel called the Wendy K. Apparently, she was only eighteen, even though she totally looked like a Mature Young Woman(TM) who wore pencil skirts and carried a clipboard. For the love of hotcakes, she even had glasses and wore her hair in a bun.

She was worse than Dylan.

And then she started asking about me, which, uncharacteristically, I was okay with... at first. She asked what brought me to Nevermore, so I said I just moved here and needed the cash; I wasn't gunning for Employee of the Month, though, or looking to make my mark on the world of gadget store management. She asked who I lived with, so I mentioned I had a mom, a sister and a dog—filed under 'C', for 'Crap I Know this Chump Doesn't Really Care About'. No, I don't want to talk about the stars and the future and the inevitability of death and oblivion with this girl, either, but 'how's school?' Puh-_lease_.

I figure, roundabout now, you're discovering the true meaning of 'small talk'. Join the club, pal; we might be here a while.

And then she said, "What about your dad?"

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* * *

~ XII ~ _quicksand_~

* * *

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For almost the entirety of his shift, Nick didn't show up at all. The computer was on a desk next to the door, so now and then I'd hear him materialize behind the wall and dump some boxes on the floor, but he never popped out to tell Brigid there were more. She just went through and checked every time she ran out of prices to calculate, as if unfazed by his social-hermit antics.

Eventually, Bilbo did emerge from his hovel in the Storage Shire, so I finally get to tell you what this ass-bag (_'ass-bag',_ _noun: a bag full of asses, ex. 'I have so many asses in my life, I'm going to need an ass-bag!'_) looked like. Brigid was sitting on the other end of the desk, supposedly scribbling sums, when I noticed she was just staring blankly at her pen. Then she slid off the desk, said "I'll be right back," and hurried away like it was an emergency. Minutes later, little miss Speedy Gonzales over here reappeared with a Nevermore-red moving trolley.

The next time we heard the telltale sounds of shifting cardboard, Brigid hopped off the desk and grabbed the trolley. "Nick?"

Even leaning against the door frame, he had to be at least my height, which was an achievement in itself. With his charcoal black jeans and unlaced combat boots, his work tee stuck out like a sore personality. It clashed with his cork brown skin and washed out his dark eyes and black mop of hair. Then again, if I imagined him in a less offensively colored shirt, I could tell you I saw potential. But I'd have to kill you.

And then... Nick's nick. A scabbing cut in the arch over his right eye; a small, incriminating 'V' in the otherwise block-black hair of his brow. But oh, it was there, all right. Hot air escaped me in an exasperated sigh—perhaps my boiling blood had finally evaporated.

"Um, I thought you could use one of these. For the boxes. It'll help you do it faster, then you can come help us out here,"

I'm not a creeper, so I didn't watch when he padded over to Brigid; I kept myself to my own beeswax and carried on beeping things (with the bar code remote, not by swearing at them). Still, my peripheral caught the way he moved like a jaguar; the way she smiled with a smidgen too much enthusiasm when he gave an almost imperceptible "Thanks," and the slight whinge of the wheels while he walked noiselessly behind it. Seriously, it was louder than he was.

Huh.

Our steady work grew tedious, punctuated only by the occasional confused customer or a daring window-shopper who just liked to chat. Brigid always talked enough for both of us, but when a scruffy dude waltzed up with an ice cream and became the reason for the second example above, she was a little at a loss for words. After politely declining a bite of his cone, Brigid informed me that Greg was a regular who never bought anything but was very keen to share video game trivia. Something told me I'd be better friends with him than her.

When it was almost time for me to check out, Nick wheeled the trolley round the corner with another stack of boxes on it. "That's the last of it," he said, moving his cargo onto Brigid's pile of unopened containers.

"Right, well, we can handle the rest of it," she said, watching him closely, "it's your sign-out time now, right? Half past five?"

Nick nodded, sparing me a glance—expression unreadable—before turning and heading for the stairs, not a 'bye' to be heard. Brigid went back to finger-stabbing her calculator as casually as possible. "Am I too old for sleepover talk?"

_Uh, kinda, yeah_. "Knock yourself out," I answered as I registered a copy of _The Princess Bride. _(BTW, if you ever get a chance to watch that, I'd recommend taking it; the hackneyed title is misleading. It's gold.)

Brigid set the calculator down and swiveled as much as possible on her desk perch to look at me. "It's 5:56. He stayed an extra twenty six minutes to help,"

"Must've had nothing better to do, then,"

She squinted at me. "How old are you? In high school?"

"Yup," I said. An invisible light bulb popped up above my head. A light bulb of evil. Loki's light bulb. "I'm gonna assume you want to know if I go to his school, and the answer is yes. Oh, and heads up, I think he's into redheads,"

She looked at me but didn't say anything. I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to break out the evil genius laugh; didn't wanna get my hopes up in case my evil scheme didn't work.

I thought a little about Nick's work schedule as I finished up. I wasn't sure about his in-time, but, like his out-time, it was definitely before mine. If his arrival time were after mine, he wouldn't have gotten into the storage room before me on my first day—and his earlier departure explained how he was already caught up with those back-alley bullies by the time I walked out.

I said adios to Brigid after five minutes of overtime. The guy set a pretty high standard for co-workers worldwide, but, had I chalked up another half hour, mom and Ella would have worried about me. Hell, thirty extra minutes with Brigid of my own free will? _I _would have worried about me. And anyway, she said we could carry on together on Friday if she wasn't done by the end of her shift. Lucky me.

Fortunately, I didn't stumble into any felonious feuds on my way back to the apartment this time. Had I caught Nick brawling in the back-streets again, I may not have been able to keep my pie-hole shut at school.

The sun was nearly done setting in the west. September evenings meant blue-gray skies but not black yet. Framed in blinding white light, the undersides of the clouds were painted a violent pink; shadowed by a palette of pale carnation and vanilla, the cyber pink streaks screamed to be noticed.

Some kind of bird swooped at lightning speed above, stabbing down and wheeling back up and disappearing effortlessly into the concrete canopy of Midtown. It had to be the biggest bird I'd ever seen, with not only a whopping wingspan but such a long, clunky body that it couldn't possibly have been as streamlined as it was, and yet it soared like nobody's business.

Whenever someone asked me the classic 'what superpower would you have?', I always came back to flight. Birds have never been my main priority (believe it or not), but I couldn't help staring when they flew past. There was just something about them, about how they could go where they felt like and do what they wanted; they stuck together in families or flocks but the power of flight was their ticket to freedom. Independent and invincible.

_If I could fly, I wouldn't want to live in a city. That would mean only flying at night so no one would see and I'd still have to avoid the pools of light pollution in the sky. I might have to start dressing in all-black to help with camouflage._

The ginger reception guy waved at me as I walked in. He was lanky and skinny, but his level shoulders helped him pull off the tux. We hadn't really talked, but it seemed like he had a name-to-face archive in his brain, where he stored info on everyone who stayed in the Walker building. That, or he was damn good at pretending he recognized everyone.

At the time, if I'd had wings, or just some good old faith, trust and pixie dust, I might have gone back to Arizona alone. Heck, I'd have checked out Colorado, or taken a detour through those square ones in the middle.

Anything with forested mountains would suit me just fine. Anything but some loud, congested city with a permanent smog blanket and too many people to take five steps without treading on someone's toes…

I turned around and took the flight of stairs up the outside of the building.

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~ XII ~ _quicksand_ ~

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_OMNISCIENT POV_

_7:10PM, Sept 4_

_INSTITUTE FOR HIGHER AERONAUTICS, NEW YORK, USA_

_Tap, tap, click. Tap tap tap._

A woman sat typing at a lavish desk, her face taut and dark blonde hair pinned by hairspray and burgundy arms on stylish glasses. Her office was enormous, spanning almost the entirety of the highest floor, though much of it was unfurnished. A good few feet in front of her desk stood an impossibly long, glass table, supported by opulent legs and surrounded by burgundy-spread seats, each exactly three feet apart. The room was lined by archival bookshelves and screens displaying security feed; at intervals between these, there were glass shelves full of neatly-placed and meticulously-labeled vials and dishes, each filled with curious fluids and samples.

Behind her, one spotless, seamless expanse of glass stretched up and across: the grandest centerpiece of a viewing extension many could ever imagine. The window itself was enough to stun anyone who walked into the room, but it shrunk into obscurity next to the view behind it: the city of New York—Midtown, to be exact—sprawling in evening splendor.

Below, a gentle amber glow rose from the streets, not yet the dazzling orange that flurries of night-time traffic never failed to produce. Beads of pale light adorned the neat, willowy buildings. Human life flourished and electricity came with it, beating nature into quasi-irrelevance.

The woman barely acknowledged the movement as the opaque glass doors to her office, labeled 'Dr. M. Janssen', were opened and people began to file in. She'd been expecting them—she called this meeting, of course. However, to an outsider, the motley group might look like a disparate collection of people; people of all ages, sizes, cultures and backgrounds filled the seats of the glass table and for some, though they all had something in common, that thing was the only one thing they shared with any other member.

However capital or cosmetic the task ahead for any given person, they'd all been recruited to work on Janssen's darling, twenty-one year-old project, the Angel Experiment.

Dr. Janssen took her time finishing up and setting her computer to sleep. Her assembly undoubtedly had more important things to be doing but, of course, not one of them was at liberty to argue. She was their Superior with a capital 'S'.

"Ladies, gentlemen, let's skip the pleasantries," she began. More than one person stifled a snort—_ah, yes. What's Dr. J, if not pleasant? _"I'll have a concise report from each sector,"

A short, stern-looking man stood briskly, his well-pressed suit and receding hairline harshly illuminated by the bird's-eye white lights in the room. "AE01 appears to be settling decently into school. A punishment was inset on her very first day, which leads me to believe she may have developed an undesirable sense of defiance. However, she seems to have taken well to AE02 already, as she spent a good deal of time with him today,"

Dr. Janssen nodded and the man sat down. Another man, seated closer to Janssen's desk, stood before the other had even finished lowering himself.

"I second Mr. Chu's judgment. However, I'd like to raise some additional concerns," minus the air of hubris and haughtiness and his distaste for the poor and the young, the man who had stood so eagerly could have put on a red suit and passed for Santa Claus. "We had anticipated AE01's... sibling, of course, but we had not known how strong their bond would be. We have also already discussed how unnecessary relationships may lead to complications, especially relationships involving subjects who possess undesirable traits. The sibling was spotted conversing with AE03 in break periods today. I'm sure you understand what that might mean,"

"Yes, Mr. Pruitt. I do," Janssen replied, "did you take any action to resolve the matter?"

"I did. I called for the sibling to meet with me in my office and expressed my concerns to her. Of course, I was as tactful as possible—I explained that, as a new and promising student, she is important to myself and my staff, and that I simply intended to steer her away from the more distasteful types at our school," he concluded, looking pleased with himself. That didn't last long.

"And you didn't consider that word of your consultation might reach AE01?" The look of a dog who has successfully fetched a stick melted off Mr. Pruitt's face. If he weren't already pale as snow, his face might have drained of color. "Did you not conclude that AE01 might take from this what was unintended on our part, perhaps a soured impression of AE03 or even of yourself?"

Mr. Pruitt took a deep breath. "No, Dr. Janssen, I did not," he answered. She nodded, lips pursed, and he sat down. He didn't let his breath go until another at the table stood to speak.

One by one, the assembly wrestled with a collective dread as they realized, yes, every single person was expected to speak. Some were more anxious than others, often those with the least to say. Some solidly vapid reports were given on progress with not only the subjects but the science behind the project, until finally, Janssen's attention was captured once more.

If not _the_ youngest, the next to stand was certainly one of the youngest people present. Not a strand of her beach blonde hair had managed to escape the tight bun at the back of her head. The way she carried herself spoke volumes about who she was and why she was here—steady hands, steady gaze, steady posture: this was a woman on a warpath; someone more than ready to carve her initials into the world, no matter what or who she had to use to do it. She might have reminded Janssen of her own eighteen-year-old self, if Janssen had still had the capacity for such a sentiment.

"AE01 has a sly sense of humor, but this is a weak point. She is easy to manipulate if she is led to believe that she has the upper hand, which also appears to be a simple task, due to her seemingly self-assured nature. She is cynical, skeptical and wary of people who show an interest in her. These traits probably link to her trust and abandonment issues and sour opinion of fathers due to her turbulent childhood. She has a penchant for hostility and a prevalent bad attitude, though she is willing to follow orders once respect has been established.

Meanwhile, AT01 is an elusive and reserved character. He rarely speaks and makes himself scarce whenever possible, so I will have to initiate contact myself should I need to observe him in particular. From what I gather, he has a dry sense of humor, which can lead to foolish decisions. His friendship is a slippery thing to grasp, as is his personality, and his trust even more so. He appears to have developed as many psychological barriers as AE01, which may make it easier for the two to put their trust in each other, as they show the potential to quickly form understanding and respect with like-minds,"

Janssen might have been impressed with the amount of information that the younger woman had managed to extract, if she were not to take it as an act of defiance—she had asked for a brief overview, after all, and she doubted that the girl would be able to offer much more than she had already given. A one-trick pony, if you will.

The doctor nodded and Dwyer sat back down. In time, that girl would learn her place.

Next to the now-seated young personage, a slightly older woman took her turn to reluctantly stand. The standing routine felt ridiculous to her, like they were in English 101, being asked to each read a poetic verse to the class. In a world without consequences, she would have been tempted to pull out a piece of crumpled note paper at start reading like a six-year-old.

It also would have been amusing to think that what she was about to say could put her in even greater danger than mocking their system, had the danger not been so very, chillingly real. "As Ms. Dwyer said, Ma- _AE01 _is willing to follow commands if she respects her senior. Her respect, however, is evasive—she does not like to make her true impression of a person clear. She may appear to remain neutral, or even calculate a mask of social acceptability, making her feelings difficult to decipher," the woman began, throwing some new material in there to cushion her next words.

Strands of her tawny-brown bob cut fell over her face. She straightened her posture in an attempt to brush them away without using her hands. "Dr. Janssen... I don't mean to question your authority," - Janssen's eyes were razors, daggers, shards of glass - "but I can only see that excess loyalty will be born of AE01 and AT01's early connections. I'm simply concerned that... the two may become more attached to one another than necessary, and that this may lead to defiance of y- us on AE01's part,"

Inside, she was kicking herself. That was _twice _she'd almost slipped up, once when she almost implied that AE01 was a human being (God forbid), and then she almost accused Dr. Janssen of doing something wrong.

Well, everything Dr. Janssen did was wrong, morally. But this time it was wrong as in 'a mistake', which could be a deadly thing to suggest.

However, her cover-ups had certainly not gone unnoticed. Dr. Janssen stood in front of her desk, hands behind her back, and her stare was a thing to behold. Her subordinate was rooted to the spot, as if held captive by an invisible tractor beam. It wouldn't seem far-fetched to believe that Janssen was a descendant of Medusa.

"All outcomes have been considered. AE01 and AE02 will form a strong breeding pair, which will allow us to observe the nature of avian-human hybrid offspring, as you all know. There will be no unforeseen attachments between AE01 and AT01 as the relationships between all subjects will be regulated with precision. Your concern on the matter is unwarranted," she said, and with that, the case was closed. "Dr. Batchelder, please inform Dr. Gunther-Hagen that I will be needing to speak with him about AE02. This concludes our meeting. You are all dismissed,"

As Toni followed Brigid from the room with a bowed head and a knot in her throat, she realized she had being stepping into quicksand before she even arrived in New York for this job. And she had a wicked feeling that, without even knowing it, Max was about to step in it too.

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~ XII ~ _quicksand_ ~

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**AN: The drama in that last scene is actually nowhere near as ****OTT**** as it was originally. I ****rewrote it a bunch of times and it still seems awkwardly theatrical in places. ****I'm confident this is better, but if you've got anything to say about it or the story so far, please tell me! Feedback's what I'm here for.**


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